Thanks for the update John. That is very helpful. We have also been having
wireless connections with Windows XP machines recently. I did some research
on this topic in the last few days and have tried to summarize it in the
flowchart at the following URL.
http://www.educ.msu.edu/info/TechTips/WirelessXP.jpg
At least I know Visio a lot better now ;-)
-----Original Message-----
From: MSU Network Administrators Group [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of John Resotko
Sent: Thursday, September 30, 2004 9:21 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [MSUNAG] Winsock, XP, and Spyware
I don't know if anyone else has seen these issues or not, but at the request
of some people I've talked to, I'm sharing what I know. In the last few
weeks, we've had a rash of student laptops that can't seem to keep the
address they were assigned by DHCP, or they repeatedly drop and re-request a
new DHCP address. In quite a few cases, Winsock corruption was the reason
for the problem.
In the September 21st issue of PC Magazine, reporter Bill Machrone reported
on an added effect of spyware: corruption of the Winsock stack under Windows
XP. This can cause some odd effects, including intermittant release/renew of
IP addresses, a general inability to connect to the web when all hardware
drivers are working normally, or odd errors when running a networked
application such as ""An operation
was attempted on something that is not a socket". His proposed cure is
to reset the Winsock stack and related TCP/IP entries in the registry.
To do this, check out
http://www.spychecker.com/program/winsockxpfix.html
a utility which does a partial reset on the Winsock stack. Microsoft also
has some proposed solutions for this problem. First, manually editing the
registry to completely remove the Winsock and TCP/IP stack, then
reinstalling it from the CD. See:
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=811259
for the details on this procedure. This corruption is the result of spyware
and adware removal which does not cleanly remove additions to the TCP/IP
stack and Winsock settings. While rare on Windows 2000 machines, there is
some additional information on how to reset related entries on both a Win2K
and WinXP system at:
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=817571
An additional procedure for reseting the IP stack and related registry
entries WITHOUT completely removing and reinstalling TCP/IP, see also :
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=299357
which give you a command line method using the Netshell (netsh) to reset
registry entries related to the stack in a manner similar to what you do
when you remove and reinstall TCP/IP.
We've had almost twenty cases of this in the last three weeks at the law
college. In all but three of them, resetting the Winsock stack resolved the
problem. I hope others find this information useful.
John A. Resotko
Head of Systems Administration
Michigan State University College of Law
208 Law College Building
East Lansing, MI 48824-1300
email: [log in to unmask]
Phone: 517-432-6836
Fax: 517-432-6861
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