Thanks to everyone who responded to the last thread. I finally
discovered that the Netgear Super-G card was intermittently failing
and probably just happened to work when I tried it in another
computer.


I replaced the failing card with a new one, but now I have a new
problem. IE6 refuses to work with the card unless my office VPN is
active. I tried asking in IE6 specific forums, but after a few days
I've gotten no useful answers so I thought I'd try here.

The situation is this: my office laptop has built-in 11b radio, but at
home I have a Netgear Super-G network so I use a WG511T card instead.
The laptop also has a Cisco VPN set up by office IT. Normally, I
should be able to use either radio, use my own network with the VPN
disabled (and IE proxy settings disabled) and then connect the VPN to
use my office network. This is the way I used my old Netgear card and
it still works the same with the built-in 11b radio.

However, with the new Netgear card, IE6 won't work unless the VPN is
connected. When the VPN is disabled, all I get is "can't display page
- can't find server or DNS error" regardless of proxy settings. I get
the same error even if I type the server's address manually so it
seems like IE6 isn't even trying.

Other net apps (Outlook, ftp, ping, trace, nslookup) are working
normally regardless of the VPN - when VPN is connected they route
through my office, otherwise they route through my home network and
ISP. Only IE6 demands the VPN be active.

I can't find any settings different between the connection using the
new card and the one using the built-in radio - both are configured
through DHCP from my router and the settings all appear to be correct.
Naturally the routing tables all change when the VPN is active. All
the IE6 settings appear to be the same regardless of connection. I've
tried uninstalling/reinstalling the Netgear card, flushing the DNS and
browser caches when the card is in use, enabling/disabling the IE6
proxy settings, etc. Nothing has worked. IE6 seems to be completely
ignoring the proxy settings and just expecting the VPN all the time.

There don't seem to be any settings for specific connections or
devices in the Cisco VPN - it seems to just take over everything when
it's active.

I don't have any way of reinstalling IE6 (or anything else). Is there
something I can check in the registry or in some setup file(s)? Any
other thoughts or suggestions? At this point I'm completely baffled.

George
--
for email reply remove "/" from address