Network Connection Folder Is Empty

We lost electricity for about 2/10ths of a second. My son was on the computer when it happened. The computer shut off and came back on. When it resumed, we were unable to connect to the internet. The first thing I did was check the Network Connections folder. To my dismay.This happened several months ago, and I was not able to fix anything and ended up using my 9 HP recovery disks. All I could find on the net seemed to involve fixing connections that you could see in the folder. I did a restore to the day before. Nothing. I did a system restore which put all the crap back on my computer that I don't need but still did not get me anything in my connections folder. I used the network connection wizard which says my broadband is working fine but won't connect. I checked my network adapters which were all working fine (although always hidden, is that normal?) When I did the system restore, it removed several network adapters, but since I don't have anything in the connections folder to connect, it doesn't really matter at this point.