SON OF A BEEYATCH!!

Why oh why did I work on a PC all weekend trying to resolve much the same issue Instead of goofing off and reading Seabreeze instead?? Would've had it solved friday night!

Client laptop "stopped connecting to the net last thursday"
No HTTP or applications updates but could ping outside of router to the net.
Reinstalled drivers, stopped DNS servers traced loads of similar issues on the web - did system restores* - nada zip bupkiss.
Finally (even though all the AV stuff is off) uninstalled it - bingo! Just as I was waiting for a system restore to go back to prior to the uninstall I logged onto Seabreeze and saw this thread

Now here's an interesting thing - a system restore back to factory still had the same non connection issue - a system restore back to just before I uninstalled the AV app - and now the app is not there at all... although it shows up in the programs list. WTF?!?!?!?!
Somehow the Trend Micro AV app is causing issues even through system restore???
Flummoxed and waaaay passed needing a beer.