Fix Unidentified Network Access: Local Only Internet Issue in Windows Vista

Fixing the local only internet access issue in Windows Vista | The Bit Guru:

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Sharing from a very helpful article that allowed me to fix an issue in Windows Vista in which when connecting to a WiFi network, the wireless connection is labeled as Unidentified and Access: is Local Only, causing users to not be able to connect to the internet.  Issue is due to a bug in Windows Vista and thought to share it.  I browsed the web in search of a fix and this did the trick.

The cause (From Microsoft):

By default, the BROADCAST flag in DHCP discovery packets is enabled in Windows Vista (DhcpConnEnableBcastFlagToggle = 1). Therefore, Windows Vista gets an IP address by using the BROADCAST flag in DHCP discovery packets. If a router or DHCP server can’t process the DHCP discovery packets, Windows Vista will fail to get an IP address. The fix disables the BROADCAST flag by setting DhcpConnEnableBcastFlagToggle to 0.
By default, this problem does not exist in Windows XP Service Pack 2, Windows XP Service Pack 3 or Windows 7 because the BROADCAST flag is disabled (DhcpConnEnableBcastFlagToggle = 0.

As suggested by Farhan Ahmad, I first tried the automatic fix by Microsoft; this fixed the issue initially.  However, a couple of days later Windows Update installed new updates on the computer and the issue happened again.  System Restore did not fix it. Neither did running the Fix IT application from Microsoft again.  Again I did as the original post suggested and tried uninstalling the wireless card drivers, restarting the computer and then reinstalling the wireless card drivers.  This worked for me.  Much thanks.