i see what your getting at. i tried in one way or another to do alot of those things you mentioned. the one thing i didn't rule out was the dhcp or dns probs. i forgot to have her ping url then ip address of a public server. i was waiting for her to get to her house so i could have her do that. could it still be dhcp if its always just her cpu and not her husbands that is not getting internet access.especially because i had her reconfigure and reset the AP via router manager page. that should have reset any dhcp problems really since it is working for others.

i'm starting to lean towards your unlikely's. i was afraid of a rootkit that is kinda why i feel bad because what happened was she gave me a flash drive and i was making a persistent linux usb for her to download and watch torrent movies w/out getting virus on windows or hd since hd would be unmounted. what happened was i wasn't finnished and just gave her a copy of 21 jump street that i had torrented myself. she was gonna try and watch it via her tv's usb not the cpu till i finished the bootable usb for her cpu. long story short she accidentally put the usb w/ the pirated movie in her cpu's usb. she didn't play it or anything but that may not matter. it was right after that the problem started. anyway thats why i feel bad.

shes coming here tommorow with the cpu and if its a cpu problem not ap problem i'll get to try stuff hands on instead of over the phone.

Not if the problem comes from the CLIENT DHCP. DHCP may work for the world, but if the DHCP client on YOUR computer fails, you won't get any address, hence no network.

Even if lamers are everywhere, don't rush too fast into the rootkit path.
And avoid giving away potentially harmful files.

beleive it or not i disabled and re-enabled both network drivers(eth and wireless) and it worked. don't know why this fixed it but it did.

thanx for all your input on both issues now i'll mark thread solved