Hey folks,
I ran across a Sony VAIO laptop today in a very odd situation. O.S.
is WinXP Home.
Essentially the end user complained that the laptop couldn't browse
over the wireless network.
After some amount of testing, I determined that TCP/IP was simply in
an odd state.
What happened was this:
The WAP was set up to give an address over DHCP, but whenever the
wireless card would request an address at boot up, the only one
received was a APIPA address (169.x.x.x). (For those who aren't sure,
this is basically a stock address that is assigned to an adapter when
a DHCP server is unavailable.)
Here's the kicker:
When I tried to renew the adapter manually via IPCONFIG /RENEW, the
received the following error:
An error occurred while renewing interface local area connection: an
operation was attempted on something that is not a socket.
Wow. Ok, so the adapter is messed up, right? Nope. It turns out that
_all_ adapters behave this way. (There is a wired NIC and 1394
network card in this computer as well.)
So, I asked the end user: "Have you changed anything recently." And
they tell me they had installed ONTRACK's System Suite 4.0, but that
it had made the system unstable so they uninstalled it.
I then find this MSKB article, which says that when McAfee's Personal
Firewall is uninstalled via Add/Remove Programs, TCP/IP functionality
is broken.
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;EN-US;q316522&
On a whim, I reinstall OT's System Suite and activate the firewall.
Suddenly, TCP/IP works. The adapters are pulling IP addresses. I
uninstall OT and it's all broken again.
I follow the notes in this MSKB article which explains how to reset
TCP/IP via Netsh. I generate a log that proves to me that TCP/IP has
been "reset," but this produces no joy. Works with OT's firewall,
doesn't without.
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;EN-US;q299357&
For the moment, I've left the user's PC working with OT installed. I
have put in a request to Ontrack to research this.
Anyone have any thoughts?
Cheers,
Mike Whalen
--
Cheers,
Mike Whalen
The Computer Valet
E-Mail: [log in to unmask]
Phone: (978) 670-5967
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