services problem with vista

[moon man]

ok ,my dads lost his internet but im thinking its down to a vista problem (home basic) ,can find his talk talk router but no internet access ,same again with a direct ethernet link. also says a dependency failed to start when i hover over the network icon.
thing is windows wont let me start any services ,acess denied even as an administrator as im thinking one of the network services needs starting.
tried turning off user access control and running servives.msc as an administrator. also rolled back to before his last windows update
laptop works fine with the router so thats ok ,but any ideas for the next time i visit ,i hate not solving stuff

 

[Philtor]

As a starting point I would run the system file checker which will check if all Windows files are where they should be and that they're not corrupted. Run a command prompt as Admin and type sfc /scannow which will start the scan.

 

[moon man]

cheers, im going up for a beef sandwich in the next hour ,i will give that a bash