I have a relatively new IBM ThinkPad R40. It worked fine
for networking for awhile, but now doesn't. It has three
network connections: 1394 (firewire), WIFI, and 100BaseT.
DHCP simply refuses to work anymore (it used to). Same
with DNS.

I originally set the machine up a few months ago on my
lan, where DHCP and DNS worked fine. Then I sent the
machine off to college with my son. He came back for the
holidays, having reconfigured it using an automated CD
provided by the university for accessing campus resources.
I tried to enable the wireless access and got it in its
current state.

I have simplifed the configuration such that only the
100BaseT adapter is enabled. If I hard code a local
address (192.168.0.29), I can ping things on my local lan
and outside on the internet. But DNS simply will not work.
(The DNScache and DHCP services seem to be running OK. My
lan's dhcp server is accessed by other machines on the
network just fine.)

If I enable DHCP, the adapter gets a 169.x.y.z address. If
I do an ipconfig /renew, I get the message "An operation
was attempted on something that is not a socket" when
trying to reconfigure a bridge adapter. I have reset
TCP/IP per KB article 299357 using "netsh int ip reset
logfile.log" to no avail.

The machine has McAfee antivirus and BlackIce. Stopping
the BlackIce service and exiting the BlackIce application
seem to have no effect.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.--Jeff

Jeff,
I have had this exact problem with my computer, and the fix
is quite simple. Unfortunately, it could not be the only thing
wrong with your son's computer. But let's attack this socket
issue. What's happened with that is that, for some reason,
some software that's running on that system has gone ninja
on the Winsock and Winsock2 values in the registry. You can
find these values in your registry editor (select run, type "regedit") under
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/CurrentControlSet/Services/Winsock , /Winsock2
First, make back-up copies of these files on the dead computer
and one of your working systems, and put the files from the
working system on a disk. Next, on your dead system, delete
those two "folders" from your registry, pop in the disk, and
double-click on the "working" backups and hit "yes" when prompted.
This will replace the corrupted sockets with working sockets.
Re-boot the system and try it out. If it doesn't work right away,
do the /release and /renew things again. If that doesn't work
and you get an error that's something like "the DHCP server cannot
be reached, operation timed out" then you're in the same mess
I'm trying to fix myself. Hope this helps ya.
-Andy Spicer

Andy, Thanks for the tip. I'll give it a try tomorrow.--
Jeff

>-----Original Message-----
>Jeff,
>I have had this exact problem with my computer, and the
fix
>is quite simple. Unfortunately, it could not be the only
thing
>wrong with your son's computer. But let's attack this
socket
>issue. What's happened with that is that, for some
reason,
>some software that's running on that system has gone ninja
>on the Winsock and Winsock2 values in the registry. You
can
>find these values in your registry editor (select run,
type "regedit") under
>HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/CurrentControlSet/Services/Winso
ck , /Winsock2
>First, make back-up copies of these files on the dead
computer
>and one of your working systems, and put the files from
the
>working system on a disk. Next, on your dead system,
delete
>those two "folders" from your registry, pop in the disk,
and
>double-click on the "working" backups and hit "yes" when
prompted.
>This will replace the corrupted sockets with working
sockets.
>Re-boot the system and try it out. If it doesn't work
right away,
>do the /release and /renew things again. If that doesn't
work
>and you get an error that's something like "the DHCP
server cannot
>be reached, operation timed out" then you're in the same
mess
>I'm trying to fix myself. Hope this helps ya.
>-Andy Spicer
>.
>