Internet does not work on Windows Vista – Sony Vaoi Laptop

My muppet brother somehow messed his laptop up. He isnt able to get internet on it, i tried to figure out something but i couldnt understand as im not familiar with Vista, i read something about family safety which was disabled, i couldt figure how to enable it. So then my brother uninstalled family safety.
Now we both are clueless about what to do.
The laptop can connect fine with a wifi hotspot but on internet explorer or firefox, it wont respond at all.
PS: Does anyone know where backup drive is on sony vaoi, i was thinking of backing everything up and re installed a fresh copy of windows.
Answer #1
try doing a system restore on it
Answer #2
Didnt work
Answer #3
*Bump
Answer #4
Go to start and type services.msc
Then make sure DHCP service is enabled and working.
If nothing then reformat.