WEIRD networking problems!!! Please help!!!

[Lisa Pearlson]

Hi,

My winXP pro worked fine for over a year. I'm not a rookie and am familiar
with basic tcp/ip and setup stuff. However, after I uninstalled VMWare
Workstation, none of my internet apps worked anymore.

I can ping all ip numbers from the command line just fine, but nothing else
works.
I checked my ip number settings, they are fine.
pinging ip numbers works, but not domain names.
pinging the DNS server ip numbers works fine, but not their names.
webbrowsing, e-mailing, messenger, or any other internet app fails.
Even though I can ping an ip number, I can not go to the websites by their
ip numbers (I tried several including my own website which I know normally
works).
I used net view, and route print, and all looks fine. I looked at winsock
and its 32.dll counterpart, looks ok too.
My internet apps give socket errors 10600 I think (could not initialize).
My webbrowser just gives "Cannot find server or DNS Error", whether I put in
an ip number or domain name.

I have my virusscanner deactivated completely, I do not have a firewall
installed.
I have ensured the winXP builtin tcp/ip filter (Firewall) is disabled.

All the 'obvious' settings are correct.
As I mentioned earlier, pinging ALL ip numbers works fine.
Browsing my local network works fine too.
But going to my router configuration with my webbrowser (local ip) also
fails.

The only 'ODD' thing I noticed when pinging from a command line is however
that something seems to get corrupt.
This is the result:

C:\>ping 10.0.0.1

Pinging 10.0.0.1 with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 10.0.0.1: bytes=32 time=4ms TTL=255
Reply from 10.0.0.1: bytes=32 time=4ms TTL=255
Reply from 10.0.0.1: bytes=32 time=3ms TTL=255
Reply from 10.0.0.1: bytes=32 time=4ms TTL=255

Ping statistics for Odwq: <--!!!! notice the corruption!!!!!
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 3ms, Maximum = 4ms, Average = 3ms

Normally it would say "Ping statistics for 10.0.0.1", instead I get weird
characters.
When I ping 10.0.0.1 again (my gateway), the weird characters stay the same.
When I ping ANOTHER ip number, I get other weird characters. It seems these
weird characters are unique per ip number and when I ping some internet
server, I get something like "QErw__qwer_FWER_wer_\H__:"
Actually, it includes other characters, like spades and clubs...

SOMETHING seems to be really screwed up (ip stack? I read about this on the
net somewhere).. In my effort to fix this, I uninstalled my network card and
tcp/ip stuff, but it didn't help. I installed VMWare again, no luck,
uninstalled it again, no luck, I reinstalled XP as "Upgrade" rather than
"clean install" to save all my data and apps. It didn't help.
I reinstalled SP1, no use.. the problem remains!!! It's driving me nuts!
How can I fix this problem? I have too much important data on that PC to do
a complete format and clean reinstall.

I read on the net a few others were having this problem after they
uninstalled other programs such as "Gator", but nobody seems to have a
solution.

Please help! I'm getting desperate enough that I'm about to do a format C:

Lisa

 

[Patrick Pitre]

Lisa,

Sounds like you've been through a lot already! Sadly, in XP, you can't
directly uninstall TCP/IP. Here is a knowledge base article that might help:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;299357

There's a command called netsh that can be used to effectively reset all
your TCP/IP reg settings to their original state. Try it out and see if it
helps.

I'm curious to know if this works, so post back with any results.

Patrick Pitre

 

[Lisa Pearlson]

Crap! Your suggestion gave me too much hope.. (not your fault, I'm just
desperate).
It didn't work. All the symptoms remain the same. ;-(
What could possible cause this corruption of the address in when I ping in
command line anyway?

Could there be something wrong with the winsock dlls?
Does ping use those dll's? Maybe I could copy those dll's from my good
working machine to this broken one?
When I look at the file sizes and versions, they seem okay though.

Lisa

 

[Lisa Pearlson]

Holy crap! That worked. You da man!

While my internet access works again now (initially I thought your suggested
solution was identical to using netsh command. Obviously it isn't!).

However, I still have that weird corruption with my ping command. I wonder
if anyone knows enough about the ping command to have a clue where the
problem lies?

Examples (look for the "Ping statistics for ". Whatever follows it is
something weird):

C:\>ping 127.0.0.1

Pinging ? with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 127.0.0.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=128
Reply from 127.0.0.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=128
Reply from 127.0.0.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=128
Reply from 127.0.0.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=128

Ping statistics for Où?:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 0ms, Maximum = 0ms, Average = 0ms

C:\>ping 10.0.0.1

Pinging ? with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 10.0.0.1: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=255
Reply from 10.0.0.1: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=255
Reply from 10.0.0.1: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=255
Reply from 10.0.0.1: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=255

Ping statistics for Où?:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 1ms, Maximum = 1ms, Average = 1ms

The corruption seems to be consistent now for everything I ping ok, but if I
abort it with a ctrl-d prematurely or there's a timeout, I get a different
corruption:

C:\>ping www.microsoft.com

Pinging a562.cd.akamai.net [?] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 80.15.235.142: bytes=32 time=34ms TTL=53
Reply from 80.15.235.142: bytes=32 time=33ms TTL=53
Reply from 80.15.235.142: bytes=32 time=33ms TTL=53
Reply from 80.15.235.142: bytes=32 time=33ms TTL=53

Ping statistics for Où?:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 33ms, Maximum = 34ms, Average = 33ms

C:\>ping www.microsoft.com

Pinging a562.cd.akamai.net [?] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 80.15.235.142: bytes=32 time=34ms TTL=53

Ping statistics for `??á?,E_l¬gï`??áx??á,¬gïûöW_OfE_:
Packets: Sent = 1, Received = 1, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 34ms, Maximum = 34ms, Average = 34ms
Control-C
^C
C:\>

Weird, huh? Seems like some memory or stack gets screwed.

Lisa

You could try rebuilding your Winsock catalog. It sounds like it might be
corrupted although I'm not sure it would explain all the symptoms. Here's
my standard post for that

If that fails or your provider list is empty, you may need to rebuild the
catalog from scratch. The following instructions will rebuild your catalog
for TCP/IP. If you are using any other transports (If you don't know, then
you probably aren't) then you will have to reinstall them as well.


1. Backup and delete the following registry keys

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Winsock
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Winsock2

2. Reboot

3. Go to the network connections folder, right click the icon for your
network connection, and select properties.

4. Click install, choose "protocol", and click "add..."

5. Click "Have Disk...", enter "\windows\inf", click OK

6. Select "Internet Protocol (TCP/IP), click OK

7. When the process in complete, reboot

--

Ken Wickes [MSFT]
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

If u think something is corrupt try updating to WinXP SP1. That fixes a lot
in my experience.

Lewis

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