I'm having a strange networking issue with my work laptop. For whatever reason, after about 24 hours, it loses connection to the internet. But anything this is connected, like email and lync, still works. When I pull up IE or Chrome, I can't go to any websites. But at the same time, my email (Outlook with corporate Exchange server) continues to work. When I try and connect to our VPN (Cisco VPN client), I get a message saying all network interfaces are disabled, but I know the ethernet/LAN port is plugged in and connected.

I tried doing "ipconfig /release & renew" and it didn't make any difference. The only thing that seems to fix it is a complete restart.

Here is how the connection is setup:
Laptop plugged into docking station -> switch in my office -> router (dd-wrt) -> Uverse 2wire gateway -> the big bad internet.

I know the network is working fine since my main desktop is also plugged into the same switch in my office and I can pull up any website just fine.

I usually remote desktop from my main computer into my work computer to work and that connection stays up just fine. But even when I'm "remoted in", I still can't get any websites to load.

Any thoughts?

You mentioned being connected to your corporate email after the disconnect. Do you virtually have to be connected to the VPN to make that connection? If you do, it sounds like there might be an issue with your vpn client.

I do not have to connect to my VPN for our email to work. The issue appears to be happening whether I connect to our VPN or not. There are a few sites I have to use the VPN for and that's when I noticed the error message the VPN was giving me about no network interfaces being connected.

Which VPN you are currently using as this happens more becasue of poor vpn connection. I will suggest you to change the VPN provider and try any USA VPN Provider like, Purevpn, Ipvanish, HMA etc.

The fact that you can access some services but not hit a website from your browser makes it sound to me like a DNS issue. Your email client probably already has the IP address of your mail server, so you only have problems when typing a URL into a browser that needs to be resolved to an IP address before the site can be visited.
But, typically the computer is told which DNS servers to use for a connection by the router, so your desktop machine would likely be having similar trouble if it's a DNS issue. It also doesn't account for the error message you get from your VPN client. Taken together, it almost sounds like failing network hardware or bad drivers on the laptop. Pretty weird.

If you have admin access on the laptop, you can try manually changing the connection's DNS servers to point to OpenDNS or Google's public DNS: http://www.howtogeek.com/164981/how-to-switch-to-opendns-or-google-dns-to-speed-up-web-browsing/
If browsing the web works after doing so, it may give you a clue as to the problem; just remember to change the settings back afterward, as the ability to access some services on your local network may be dependent on whatever the current settings are.