Vista home premium help?

Right guys and gals

here is the problem

I have a vista home premium laptop that has no cd/dvd rom drive listed and cannot access the web using IE8 or firefox through a wireless connection even though the wireless network is fine as another pc can access it no problem and it can be pinged ok from the laptop. i have reinstalled firefox and restored IE8 to a default state. the cd/dvd rom issue i will need help from google and i am going to run an anti-virus/anti malware check as well, any other ideas on what i can do
PS
i also ran a chkdsk but it took only seconds to complete(cant be right surely???)
And i will attempt a wired ethernet connection to the router and see what that brings up.