Shane, great news
-- I now have internet access restored on my computer.
You were right, the Deterministic driver did have something to do with it. Somehow it modifies the network driver such that all internet requests go thru it even when I am not connected to the VPN.
Here is a detailed breakdown of what I did.
During my search for a resolution, I came across dozens of sites with solutions, but none of them worked.
One of the things I read in passing was go into safe mode to execute some of the network commands -- that I had not done as I didn't think it would make a difference. But it should be done because that way you are only dealing with the minimum number of drivers to give you basic functionally. After the post about removing the VPN, I thought maybe I should try network access in safe mode - maybe networking will work because the VPN driver is a supplemental driver and the system will not load it. That test failed -- no internet access even in safe mode (but the icon in the system tray says i do). I disabled the driver, same result: failure.
So what do I do now? I don't want to uninstall the VPN software because as I said it is a pain to reinstall.
One of the sites I ran across while trying to resolve this suggested a list of netsh commands -- many of which I had already executed with no resolution.
Here is the website:
http://jayesh-mewada.blogspot.com/2012/09/ping-transmit-failed-error-code-1231_28.htmland here is the command list suggested:
netsh winsock reset all
netsh int 6to4 reset all
netsh int ipv4 reset all
netsh int ipv6 reset all
netsh int httpstunnel reset all
netsh int isatap reset all
netsh int portproxy reset all
netsh int tcp reset all
netsh int teredo reset all
As I stated above, many of the commands listed I had already tried and they did not work (probably because I was not in safe mode). But I think the two that did work are:
netsh int httpstunnel reset all
netsh int portproxy reset all
I rebooted my machine back into safe mode and tried to ping 8.8.8.8 and it worked -- I was
I pinged at least three other sites and they all came back positive.
I rebooted my machine into normal mode and tried the pings again and they all succeeded.
I re-enabled the VPN driver and tried the pings again and they all succeeded again.
I started Firefox and restored my previous sessions and all the windows and tabs came up.
I started the VPN software and logged into work -- success.
I don't know what these two commands do
netsh int httpstunnel reset all
netsh int portproxy reset all
but they had some effect on the VPN driver and cleared up whatever the problem was.
Shane, thank you for your patience, guidance and input.
I hope you have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
And a thank you to jayesh mewada as well -- his blog post contains the solution for my internet/VPN issue but I don't think that was the intent.
My Christmas will be much better now, because I don't have to spend any part of it rebuilding my computer.
Thanks once again and I'll be back if I have another obscure problem but hopefully no time soon.