Hello again. I have a rather spontaneous and inexplicable computer problem. As far as I know though, it has nothing to do with viruses/worms, so if I'm in the wrong forum let me know and I'll take this elsewhere.
I have a computer that's about a year old running Windows XP (Pro I believe) with all the latest updates and service packs. When I went to sleep a couple nights ago, everything was working fine. The next morning I took a trip and was gone most of the day. When I came back home, there had apparently been a storm and half of the house had no electricity; a trip to the circuit breaker fixed that. I had not left my computer on while I was gone; it was plugged in, but shut off. When I turned it on, it seemed to be working normally, except I had no internet connection. First, I restarted the modem and the router, which made no difference. Another computer in the house and a videogame console I have were both able to access the 'net fine, so the connection wasn't just down for the whole house. I also swapped ethernet cables, so that's not the problem. I also noticed that the lights by my computer's ethernet port are not on, and far more troubling, there is nothing at all anymore in my Network Connections window. Usually I have, if memory serves, at least two icons in that window at all times, even when I have no connection (1394 Connection and Local Area Connection I think).
My biggest fear is that somehow the storm fried my computer's ethernet port (or whatever the key component is, maybe the NIC? I'm rather clueless when it comes to computer hardware), although this would be surprising considering that it didn't hurt the other computer in the house that's hooked up to the same modem and router that mine is (plus the fact that my ASUS P5G41TM-LE motherboard supposedly has "ASUS Anti-Surge Proection"). If that's not the case (which I sure hope), then does anyone have any ideas as to why my networking software would just stop working, or what I could do about it?