Just to be sure.. DHCP Media Sense has nothing to do with any of this, right? I disabled that with a registry tweak, and thinking that it may be related to the problem, rolled back that tweak last night, but the issue persisted. So I guess that's irrelevant?
Also.. just to "synchronize" this thread with the one over at linksysinfo.org, here's the list of components I removed in the Windows setup I'm currently running, with nLite:
said by nLite :
Customized by nLite v1.0 RC7 - www.nliteos.com
Components removed:
Accessibility Options
Briefcase
Calculator
Charmap
ClipBook Viewer
Defragmenter
Games
Internet Games
NT Backup
Paint
Pinball
Screensavers
Wordpad
Display Adapters
Display Adapters (old)
Ethernet (LAN)
IBM Thinkpad
ISDN
Logitech WingMan
Microsoft SideWinder
Modems
MultiFunctional
Portable Audio
SCSI/RAID
Sony Jog Dial
Sound Controllers
Tape drives
Toshiba DVD decoder card
Wireless Ethernet (WLAN)
Gravis Digital GamePort
Multi-port serial adapters
Smart Cards
Teletext codec
Windows CE USB Host
AOL ART Image Format Support
Intel Indeo codecs
Luna Theme
Media Center
Mouse Cursors
Movie Maker
Music Samples
Old CDPlayer and Sound Recorder
Speech Support
Tablet PC
Client for Netware Networks
Communication tools
FrontPage Extensions
Internet Connection Wizard
Internet Information Services (IIS)
IP Conferencing
MSN Explorer
Netmeeting
Network Monitor Driver and Tools
NWLink IPX/SPX/NetBIOS Protocol
Outlook Express
Peer-to-Peer
Synchronization Manager
Vector Graphics Rendering (VML)
Web Folders
Windows Messenger
.NET Framework
Administrative Templates
Administrator VB scripts
Color Schemes
Desktop Cleanup Wizard
Disk Cleanup
Document Templates
File and Settings Wizard
Help
Out of Box Experience (OOBE)
Private Character Editor
Search Assistant
Tour
Web View
Alerter
Beep Driver
Distributed Link Tracking Client
Error Reporting
Fax Services
Indexing Service
Messenger
Network DDE
Network Location Awareness (NLA)
Remote Registry
Removable Storage
Secondary Logon
Service Advertising Protocol
System Restore
Telnet Server
Languages
Bear in mind that if you think you see something important removed, like "Ethernet (LAN)", it just means that I removed the Windows included driver for that, which, if you install the device manufacturer's driver for it, does not matter. In this particular case, I installed the Realtek LAN drivers for my NIC, otherwise Internet access from my laptop would not even be possible.