Netgear Wireless Card And Cisco VPN Conflict - "No Connectivity"

I use my HP Laptop (Pavilion N5190, XP Pro SP2) at both home and school and
recently installed a Cisco VPN client so as to take full advantage of the
wireless network at school. When I'm at school, everything works fine. Even
when I later go to a coffee shop, I can hop on their wireless (without using
the VPN) and all is fine. However, now when I try to logon to my network at
home (without the VPN) I have "limited or no connectivity issues".

I'm using a Netgear Wireless PC Card (WG511 v1). I have a cable modem
running to a Netgear Wireless Router (MR814v2). The other laptop in my
apartment (without the VPN installed) can access the wireless network fine.
When I try to access, the "Netgear Smart Wizard - Wireless Assistant" does
find the network and indicates that I have a full strength connection. The
green lights come on and show up in the task bar. However, the Microsoft
Wirless Connection tries using the network and times out, giving me the
"limited or no connectivity" issue and an x-ed out icon in the task bar.

I've tried "repairing" the connection, but no luck. I've also tried turning
of the WIndows Firewall, but the problem remains the same.

I access the home network with WEP security and a manually entered key.

Thanks for any assistance in figuring out this issue.

OK, I've been trying all kinds of things, but still no luck.

I tried the ipconfig /release, ipconfig /renew combo, but that didn't help.
I've double checked that the WEP key matches that of the router, but no
luck. (In fact, my other laptop in the apartment IS able to connect to the
network with the WEP key; it's just not working for my laptop.)

I've read around on many of other similar posts, but nothing seems
applicable to my problem.

The one thing I'm hesitant to do is apply static IP addressing. I'm
hesitant because I connect to many networks ... home, coffee shop, school via
VPN. Won't a Static IP interfere with my connections to these other networks?

Any thoughts?

"briantrease" wrote:

> I use my HP Laptop (Pavilion N5190, XP Pro SP2) at both home and school and
> recently installed a Cisco VPN client so as to take full advantage of the
> wireless network at school. When I'm at school, everything works fine. Even
> when I later go to a coffee shop, I can hop on their wireless (without using
> the VPN) and all is fine. However, now when I try to logon to my network at
> home (without the VPN) I have "limited or no connectivity issues".......