When I am away from home I often have no access to the Internet. But it never used to matter because my laptop was XP and I used localhost/hosts/127.0.01 and virtual hosts in Apache to work on the train whilst travelling etc with my website development stuff.

Until I installed Vista Ultimate.

Now it works for long enough to get me going. And then it just dies. It unhelpfully tells me I am not connected to the Internet. I know that ... that is why I am using my localhost and apache service.

Anyone encountered this and solved it? Sometimes a reboot helps, but it is not a practical option and does not address the issue.