Laptop no longer connects to the Internet

Thanks for the help
We solved the problem. I think
I found out Zone Alarm was disabled but not uninstalled, when I enabled Zone alarm the PC connects to the internet fine.
How can disabling Zone Alarm prevent access to the Internet?
I disabled it again to see if it would stop access to the Internet this time also but this time I was able to access the Internet with Zone Alarm disabled. What the heck is going on?
Is it worth it to use Zone Alarm or is Vista Firewall fine?

I don't know much about the vista firewall. I've heard it's much improved over XP. Personally I like Zone Alarm but it gets annoying and frequently I'll disable it. Especially since I play poker frequently and no matter how much I've tried it always blocks my poker site. I'm most likely going to uninstall it totally. Sounds like it just burped on you when it got disabled last time. Normally disabling it should allow all traffic to pass. Glad you got it though.