Thanks to all, and Roadhouse's solution worked for me, too! I have a linksys router and I went to the status page to find the DNS servers to type into my TCP/IP settings, and did and a run -> cmd -> ipconfig to find the IP address I could type in, 192.168.1.100, and then found the Subnet mask on the same page, and used 192.168.1.1 for the gateway.

I use Dell wireless utility to manage my settings and I've disabled Wireless Zero Configuration in Run -> Services.msc

My wireless icon used to take forever to load and then would say no connectivity and then most of the time it would connect at that point. Now it loads immediately and clears the cache as well!