It's amazing how little info there is on this problem and as yet, nobody has an actual fix. I know some people have tried the common suggestions and some have had success, but I wonder if their problem will just come back again later. When everyone's having a problem and nobody can find a solution that works for everyone, it's usually an issue with the product and/or it's interaction with other products. In this case, Vista's networking features seem to be poorly implemented in some way. I work as an IT consultant for several businesses. One in particular has adopted Vista Business 32bit across the board and random users are having this Access: Local Only problem. Everyone's on the same subnet with the default gateway being the router to the Internet. Problem is that the internet access dies, (the globe either stays or goes, doesn't seem to matter as it's just a cosmetic icon anyway) yet the local connection to the server and other internal hosts works fine. Here's what I know so far: No patch from Microsoft, as of Nov 27 2008, fixes this problem in any way. In fact, I'm almost certain that it's a patch that CAUSES it. On one computer, I rebuild the OS from scratch where prior to that it had been Local Only for 3 days straight (prior to that, it had been intermittent). Idid not do any Windows Updates on the new build, and the problem was fixed and the system ran fine for about a week. Thinking perhaps it was just a 'glitch' after all, I went ahead and did all the Updates, and voila, the problem came back immediately on reboot. I went through the entire rebuild process again, and it worked fine without any updates but as soon as the updates were done it came back. I'm going to try peeling away one patch at a time til I find something, but I suspect it's more complicated than that or MS would have figured it out by now (or, they know which patch it is, but haven't fixed it yet so aren't telling us...). Here is one thing I found consistent whenever the problem comes up: We can't ping the router's IP. I've ensured it's not a security/filtering issue or any actual communications issue, it's just Vista and it's goofy Network Location Awareness or whatever other IP-related enhancements are in the OS. With the connection live, using static IP's, I can switch the cable from the problem Vista machine, to an XP laptop and Internet immediately works - I switch the cable back to the Vista machine, problem still there andno reboots of either machine took place, so we know the issue is "live" and not caused by some intervening factor. One thing I'm checking into now is the potentially older IOS on the Cisco 1811. I saw a post someplace saying that Vista's new networking features are not compatible with older software/firmware on routers and such. First off, shame on Microsoft for implementing features that actually conflict with routers , but anyway, whatever it is I'm sure the MS devs are looking into it. But please hurry, there is literally no fix for this problem. I've crawled alllll over the net looking for answers, and everyone has a suggestion or something that worked for them in their one instance, but nobody has a certified, general fix yet and I've yet to see anybody in a business environment say they had this problem all over and were able to fix it consistently. Thanks for reading, please make any suggestions you can, other than the obvious which is that I need to write shorter posts

Hi, According to your description, it seems the issue disappeared when using static IP. Am I right? If so, please check if the current IP address is 169.xxx.xxx.xxx. If so, the problem may be the computer cannot get IP address problem. Please check the following link. If not, please let me know. Windows Vista cannot obtain an IP address from certain routers or from certain non-Microsoft DHCP servers http://support.microsoft.com/kb/928233 Hope it helps.

You can also take a look on this tips to solve access local only problem in Windows Vista article, see whether can solve your problem.

Hello, maybe you can help with this.I have read the many postings on "Access: local only" and the only one that comes close to my problem is:http://support.microsoft.com/kb/947041/en-usBut that article implies that the problem will resolve itself after some amount of network traffic: but not for me; once in this state, it persists for days.[Note: I have two network devices, but the wired net is not connected; so maybe the above does not apply?]I'm running Vista Home Premium on Dell Studio laptop, all updates, Wifi, the network works!But NLA reports "Access: Local only", which means that applications that believe NLA stop working.[Google Sidebar, for instance]If I reboot, NLA resets, and things work again; but that is a high price to pay.The problem may begin after coming out of hibernate or sleep.(so doing a reboot would completely defeat the purpose of sleep/hibernate, eh?)I have tried stopping and restarting NLA (and NLS with it), but to no effect.Can someone provide a workaround to I can avoid rebooting?[Ohter thannever hibernate/sleep, because eventually the battery drops and Vista sleeps itself anyway...]