Cannot connect to internet 1

[MarcLodge]

Hi all,
I have a Dell PC running PX Home that crashed and gave an error message on reboot that said it could not find c:\system (or something similar) and that my best bet was to repair from the xp disk.

This I did (SP1) and the machine is now up and running, of a fashion. The problem is now that it will not connect to the net. I have an ethernet cable connected and the lights at the back flash merrily. I have been to the Dell website on another machine and downloaded and installed the drivers for the LAN, all to no avail. I can see the Local Area connection icon and it seems to think it has a good connection but when I try to connect to the net, nothing.

I have gone into ipconfig and it tells me:
An internal error occurredI The system cannot find the file specified.
Additional information: Unable to query hostname

Researching this, I have turned off the windows firewall and also looked at the registry HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\ControlSet001\Services\DHCP key to ensure the dependonservice value is Tcpip Afd NetBT, which it is.

I've run winsockfix.exe from here:

http://www.pcbutts1.com/downloads/WinsockxpFix.zip

and I've also issued the command netsh int ip reset resetlog.txt

All this hasn't worked, and I'm struggling to think what to do next. The ethernet cable definitely works as I've plugged it into another machine which is fine.

A couple more things of interest, when I look at services.msc the DHCP Client shows as 'starting' rather than stared or stopped. Also there is no 1394 connection on the machine - I hasten to add that I have no idea what this connection is, but noticed that another XP machine I've got had one of them!

Has anybody got any ideas?

Marc

 

[linney]

Have you checked any Proxy Settings to see if they have been set to some setting, this is an old trick by some malware infections.

IE/ Tools/ Internet Options/ Connections/ LAN Settings/ Proxy Server, usually they are unchecked and blank for home users.

What hardware is between your machine and the Internet? Have you tried rebooting, or resetting, any Router?

I don't think you have to worry about not having any 1394 connection as that has nothing to do with Internet Connections. I believe that is more to do with "Firewire" connections which is not often used.

IEEE 1394 interface

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_1394_interface

If you did a repair install then maybe you have carried across a bagful of corruption from one install to the repair install. An option to try would be to save your valuable data, including E-mail, then Format and Clean Install.

Have you tried connecting from within "Safe Mode with Networking"?

 

[tlcscousin]

Some people report success when they change the computer name and workgroup and reboot.
This can be done through control panel-->system-->computer name-->change
rename the computer and change the workgroup name save and restart when prompted.

 

[MarcLodge]

Linney,
I checked the proxy settings and they were pleasingly blank. I also rebooted my router, but there was no difference. Safe mode with networking produced the same problem, so I manually downloaded XP SP2 and installed to see if that would solve it, but it didn't.

Before going down the path of getting all the data off and doing a complete clean install, I thought I'd try tlcscousin's idea.......

tlcscousin - genius. It worked. Renamed computer and workgroup and the whole thing came to life, connnecting to the net look usual. Marvellous help, for which you deservedly catch a star from me. Never would have tried that in a million years and haven't heard that as an idea before at all. Many many thanks.

Marc