Windows 7 - No internet access upon resuming from sleep. NT Kernel & System high processor usage.

Hello,

Recently my desktop has been having some issues with the network adapter upon resuming from sleep, refusing to connect when resuming from sleep. It reports that a network cable is unplugged, and is very unresponsive when I tried to disable + enable it. I looked through task manager and saw that the NT Kernel was taking up 25% of my processor.

My network driver is up to date (device manager -> update driver reported so).

From what I understand, something is causing the kernel to hang and that's causing the lack of connection + unresponsiveness.

I unchecked the "allow the computer to turn off this device to save power" option for the adapter, so perhaps that will fix it, will have to see the next time I sleep the computer.

What else can I do to troubleshoot / fix the issue?