Multiple network disconnected icons
 

Firstly, the 'fault' is on 'er-indoorses' machine, and by definition anything that goes wrong on it is her fault. Ok? Now then.

A couple of days ago, a wail from the other end of the study 'Jim, I've got lots of little x-es along the bottom of my screen. I haven't seen them before.' Naturally, I pretended to ignore this - I've been caught before. However...

When I looked at said machine when the coast was clear, sure enough, there were six or seven Network Disconnected icons. Since there's only one network card, no bluetooth, no etc's whatsoever, I'm puzzled. I guess that uninstalling the network card in Control Panel and letting the machine find it again might work, but before I do that, is this a phenomenon familiar to anyone else?

I need to take some action before the aural noise reaches the pain threshold.

Yep and the first thing i'd suggest is to open the network and sharing centre and investigate what your PC thinks it has in the way of NICs