OK, I installed SP2 on a VM and ran some tests.
At the beginning I didn't even install NSM. I just set up some settings manually and rebooted. And guest what: The GW disappeared. I tried several different settings (different ranges, different amounts of addresses, etc.) - each time all the GW addresses vanished after a reboot.
I tried the same with NSM. As expected the same problem occured.
I found several topics concerning exactly this problem:
1. http://social.technet.microsoft.com/For … 550695ee3d
2. http://social.technet.microsoft.com/For … fc73b85883
3. http://forum.thewindowsclub.com/windows … ished.html
...
People wrote there, that this problem didn't occur in the RC! I have no idea how such a big flaw could happen between a RC and the final version. However, I assume, after the official release there will be some big moaning... Maybe Microsoft will come up with an update for that.
Until then: I think, I found a way how to solve this manually.
Solution for Vista SP2 gateway bug:
1. Open the registry with regedit.exe
2. Go to the path: HKLM/System/CurrentControlSet/Services/Tcpip/Parameters/Interfaces/
3. Here you'll need to select the CLSID of your networkadapter where you change the settings. You'll probably recognize it by looking at the value IPAddress that will have the IP of this adapter.
4. Open the value "DefaultGateway" by doubleclicking it. You will see a list of all the gateways that disappeared! (maybe in your case it will be only one, in my case there were due to lots of testing several addresses) Very likely, the first line will be empty. I'm not sure, how this little flaw can make such a big problem. However, if you manually remove this first empty line, click OK and reboot your system everything should be working fine again.
After doing this, everything seemed normal to me. I could change the GW manually and by NSM. After a reboot everything was still there. Of course it needs to be verified in a long-term use if it fixes it forever or if the problem comes back at some point.
