Ugh...I'm tired. Brain's not working and I'm having problems getting this resolved.

I have some POS Dell laptop here. It was stuffed full of nasties. I got them all cleaned, but I can't connect to the web. After I was done I ran winsockfix.exe just in case blowing away one of the spyware files broke the IE connection. However, it sits there and says it's aquiring the connection, but that's it...just sits there. I thought maybe the onboard NIC was messed up, so I installed my handy-dandy Ethernet to USB adapter. I also turned off the 'Notify me is there is no connection' box but it's still just sitting there trying to "aquire the network address". Renewing the IP didn't have any effect. DHCP is enabled. I do get a 'Media disconnected' error in ipconfig.

So...what else should I try? I did a chkdsk /r and that didn't help.

Hi John,

I would try LSPFix from http://www.cexx.org/lspfix.htm on this system. Looks like the malware cleanup may have corrupted your network stack.

Chris

Nyet....I'd already done that one too. I tried releasing the ip, but it already was. I'd tried renewing it, but that's when it told me the media was disconnected. I'm not seeing something, but I don't know what it is.

Did you disable the original NIC after installing the new USB/Eth? I've heard windows gets 'confused' and so will report Media Disconnected.

Can you ping 127.0.0.1?

No suspicious 017 entries when you run HJT on this system ?

The list is as short as my own. I think I may try a over-the-top install this time and see how that goes. There is no reason that I can see for this not to connect, unless there are some messed up system files. I can ping the local host as well, so I know their NIC is functioning. The USB to Ethernet adapter bypasses everything else in the system...a great tool to have if you're reinstalling systems like Dell and you have to get the network driver online, or if a virus or spyware have screwed something up.

It was putting me behind so I put it off to the side. I have 4 other systems which need to be done today, so I'll have to tackle it when I've got the pile cleared.

Have you tried using sfc?

I have known that to fix corrupted files before ... might be quicker than doing an over-the-top insall...

I did an over the top install. Apparently I was facing a corrupted profile and some other system files which were damaged. The install automatically generated a new user profile which had to be set up like a fresh installation. None of the settings for IE or any of the programs, while they were still there, had the previous settings. I got everything the way I wanted, went into the old profile and transferred the contents of the 'My Documents' folder over to the new profile and everything seems to be working fine. It's almost like the new install isolated the old profile so it couldn't have anything to do with the fresh install. However, unlike other over the top installations, this one still showed the old profile on the screen as active, not just in Windows Explorer. Kinda weird, huh? I've never seen anything like this.