How come I cant receive internet from my router to my laptop (2)?

I got home today and it was working fine, and all of the sudden my internet stop working and i kept receiving errors for internet explorer. so then i restarted my computer and then my yahoo messenger stopped working. my router is working fine because me wii works and so does my ipod touch. can anyone help me out with this problem? I do not have a external wireless card (so its internal) and im guessing it is a preference setting problem. Do i maybe play around with the settings? (like with the ip adress andf ports? and if so, how do i receive this info? from route? Please and Thank You

How come I cant receive internet from my router to my laptop (2)?internet explorer 6

It's almost S.O.P. when an Internet connection to check to make sure you're getting an ip address. However, you should check your cables. Sometimes a loose cable will cause you hours of troubleshooting when it's simply a loose cable. Here's a few steps to take after checking the cables. Report back what you found, we'll go from there.

1. Click: Start

2. Press "R" / Select "Run"

3. Type: "cmd" (without quotes)

4. Press: "Enter"

5. Type: "ipconfig" (assuming Windows XP)

You should see "Ethernet Adapter" listed and to the right of "IP Address" a 4 octet number separated by periods. I'm not sure how familiar you are with this. If you see an ip address beginning with the numbers "169" then you most certainly have a connection problem. This ip address is assigned to your machine by Windows usually when it has failed to connect to a router or some such device. Report back with what you found.