Unbaffled the prob. Finger trouble I'm afraid!
We're intrigued to know what it was now! :D
Well, to cut a long story short, my asus 66 router stopped working with LAN direct connection BUT would work wirelessly.
Apparently if the DHCP is disabled the router will not acknowledge any addresses. I understood that DHCP being disabled
could scupper the wireless connections or so I am led to believe looking through various posts on the net.
So, re enabled DHCP and all reverted to normal though how it came to be switched off in the middle of a net trawl baffled me.
The 'fix' as it were was relayed to me by a friend who has the same router. All pretty weird but all's well now.