I connect to the internet by using my cell phone as a dial up modem. (shh, don't tell my service provider) The connection is usually seamless and the speed is good (150kbps) but occasionally, the connection will get terminated by either the phone or the network, I'm not sure which and then Windows7 stubbornly doesn't acknowledge that the connection is dead so I can re-dial. I have tried to manually kill the connection, but then anything related to the network service refuses to open and the connection is still there. No "Network and Sharing Center", "Network Devices" and often the tray menu will refuse to pop open. The only way I have found to clear the problem is a full restart which. Logging off doesn't work and I haven't been able to find the service that is frozen.

If anyone knows how to fix this or prevent this from happening or even how to go about troubleshooting I would be very grateful.

ps. This problem is non-existant when tethering in linux on the same machine. (Ubunutu 9 and JoliOS)