The case of 0x7d4caa9b

This item has caused a lot of pain to many people, myself included.
After WindowsRestore failed, I remembered ERUNT which stores my Registry every morning.
A couple of strokes and the problem was fixed (after many hours of useless research).
You may find this program priceless - and free.
Good luck!

 

I didn't have ERUNT preinstalled, so I did it the hard way and reinstalled my network drivers, reset the tcp ip settings, etc. Not sure why, but the problem turned off my sound as well.

But in the end, the actual fix was simply renaming my computer.

It brought back the internet and my sound in one restart. I would hypothesize that the hardware didn't know the name of the computer it was connected to.