odd, stupid, <insert more words here> computer!

[Guest]

alright... i have found a very odd and mentally challenging problem regarding
internet access on my laptop. i've tried several things that i could think of
to try fixing this problem, all of which did not work. i can't even think of
where to start explaining this.

i am home for thanksgiving at my parents house, and up until about two days
ago, the internet connection to my laptop was working, but then it decided to
stop working correctly. basically, the problem that i am having now is that
for up to five minutes after restarting my computer, the internet is working
as it normally had--i could browse websites, sign on to america online's
instant messenger, and msn messenger, and also use a program called
foldershare to synchronize contents of my computer with those of another
computer. after those five minutes passed, i could not get the ability to
browse websites again unless i restarted my computer and visit sites within
five minutes, just to go and repeat it over and over; however, when those
five minutes passed, i could still talk to people online with aol im and msn
messenger, and synchronize files and folders.

nothing had been changed, no programs installed or uninstalled, ip address
remained the same; with both of my wireless Linksys and Belkin laptop
adapters (I had one, thought I lost that, bought another, found the previous
one), i had a 60-80% signal from my wireless Belkin router. each adapter
experienced this problem; while i am writing this, i have my laptop plugged
into my router by an ethernet cable, and it too is experiencing this problem.
all of these lead me to believe that it is the computer not doing something
correct, but i am totally lost in what that could be. all connections were
set up to receive automatic ip addresses.

my brother also has a laptop, and he has not been experiencign this problem.

thank you ahead of time for your help!
rob.

 

[Shenan Stanley]

alright... i have found a very odd and mentally challenging problem
regarding internet access on my laptop. i've tried several things
that i could think of to try fixing this problem, all of which did
not work. i can't even think of where to start explaining this.

i am home for thanksgiving at my parents house, and up until about
two days ago, the internet connection to my laptop was working, but
then it decided to stop working correctly. basically, the problem
that i am having now is that for up to five minutes after
restarting my computer, the internet is working as it normally
had--i could browse websites, sign on to america online's instant
messenger, and msn messenger, and also use a program called
foldershare to synchronize contents of my computer with those of
another computer. after those five minutes passed, i could not get
the ability to browse websites again unless i restarted my computer
and visit sites within five minutes, just to go and repeat it over
and over; however, when those five minutes passed, i could still
talk to people online with aol im and msn messenger, and
synchronize files and folders.

nothing had been changed, no programs installed or uninstalled, ip
address remained the same; with both of my wireless Linksys and
Belkin laptop adapters (I had one, thought I lost that, bought
another, found the previous one), i had a 60-80% signal from my
wireless Belkin router. each adapter experienced this problem;
while i am writing this, i have my laptop plugged into my router by
an ethernet cable, and it too is experiencing this problem. all of
these lead me to believe that it is the computer not doing
something correct, but i am totally lost in what that could be. all
connections were set up to receive automatic ip addresses.

my brother also has a laptop, and he has not been experiencign this
problem.

Scanned for Spyware?

 

[Guest]

pretty sure that i ran spybot and lavasoft ad-aware after getting this
problem. but i can't swear to it. running them now, or again. (i did update
the definitions for both programs using another computer's internet
connection). i'll respond in the morning when these have finished. my laptop
being 4 years old now isn't the quickest...

 

[Guest]

i thought of something i needed to check online, and while doing so, the
scans finished. spybot found two registry keys for the WhenU.SaveNow, which
are now removed from my computer. nothing of importance were found in
ad-aware, just file history menus.

computer still becomes "disconnected but connected" after a couple minutes.

 

[Shenan Stanley]

i thought of something i needed to check online, and while doing
so, the scans finished. spybot found two registry keys for the
WhenU.SaveNow, which are now removed from my computer. nothing of
importance were found in ad-aware, just file history menus.

computer still becomes "disconnected but connected" after a couple
minutes.

You may want to try the LSPFix as well as running HijackThis..

Hijack This! (Free!)
http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/downloads.html
(Log Analyzer: http://hjt.iamnotageek.com/ )

 

[Guest]

i looked into finding the lspfix program and stumbled on a windows internet
explorer column
(http://www.microsoft.com/windows/IE/community/columns/IEtopten.mspx); i
followed the part saying to look at the HOSTS file. i found that, but it does
not have any text at all in it. could that be one reason of this problem?

 

[Malke]

i looked into finding the lspfix program and stumbled on a windows
internet explorer column
(http://www.microsoft.com/windows/IE/community/columns/IEtopten.mspx);
i followed the part saying to look at the HOSTS file. i found that,
but it does not have any text at all in it. could that be one reason
of this problem?

No. You don't need to have anything in your Hosts file. You also don't
need to use LspFix for Windows XP boxen; that's for Win9x/ME machines.
If you don't have Service Pack 2, get WinsockXPFix instead:

http://www.spychecker.com/program/winsockxpfix.html

If you have Service Pack 2, do:
Start>Run>cmd [enter]
netsh winsock reset catalog [enter] (reboot)

If that doesn't help, try (from the cmd prompt)

ipconfig /flushdns [enter]

You mentioned that you had done some scanning for malware but what about
antivirus? You might want to run through these malware removal steps:
http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/page2.html#Removing_Malware

At least you'll know you are starting from a clean baseline.

Check your power management settings. Are you running the laptop on
battery only? If yes, the battery may be low and the power management
utility may be turning off networking devices. If you are running on
battery, try plugging the computer in with the AC adapter and see if
that makes a difference.

This should give you a troubleshooting starting point. After you've gone
through some of this, post back with results for more help.

Malke

 

[ANONYMOUS]

I would also add this wonderful Microsoft Service (still beta but works
well):

http://safety.live.com/site/en-US/default.htm

hth

i looked into finding the lspfix program and stumbled on a windows
internet explorer column
(http://www.microsoft.com/windows/IE/community/columns/IEtopten.mspx);
i followed the part saying to look at the HOSTS file. i found that,
but it does not have any text at all in it. could that be one reason
of this problem?

No. You don't need to have anything in your Hosts file. You also don't
need to use LspFix for Windows XP boxen; that's for Win9x/ME machines.
If you don't have Service Pack 2, get WinsockXPFix instead:

http://www.spychecker.com/program/winsockxpfix.html

If you have Service Pack 2, do:
Start>Run>cmd [enter]
netsh winsock reset catalog [enter] (reboot)

If that doesn't help, try (from the cmd prompt)

ipconfig /flushdns [enter]

You mentioned that you had done some scanning for malware but what about
antivirus? You might want to run through these malware removal steps:
http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/page2.html#Removing_Malware

At least you'll know you are starting from a clean baseline.

Check your power management settings. Are you running the laptop on
battery only? If yes, the battery may be low and the power management
utility may be turning off networking devices. If you are running on
battery, try plugging the computer in with the AC adapter and see if
that makes a difference.

This should give you a troubleshooting starting point. After you've gone
through some of this, post back with results for more help.

Malke
--
Elephant Boy Computers
www.elephantboycomputers.com
"Don't Panic!"
MS-MVP Windows - Shell/User

 

[Guest]

Check your power management settings. Are you running the laptop on
battery only? If yes, the battery may be low and the power management
utility may be turning off networking devices. If you are running on
battery, try plugging the computer in with the AC adapter and see if
that makes a difference.

Nope. Always-- at least, for the most part-- have been running the laptop
off of the ac adapter. But, you did get me thinking about something
similar... i remember seeing something in the device manager advanced screen
thats something like "wakeup when internet connection changes." doing this
led me to find something else...

for my ethernet connection to my laptop, it says I/O Range: E300-E3FF,
Memory Range F0000800-F00008FF, IRQ: 11. In the conflicting device list, it
says, "Input/Output Range E300 - E3FF used by: VIA CPU to AGP Controller".

i am currently in Safe Mode, running the Multi-AV programs I had downloaded
from the mentioning of it earlier. when the scaning of these are completed,
i'll restart and check on this in normal mode.

 

[Guest]

for my ethernet connection to my laptop, it says I/O Range: E300-E3FF,
Memory Range F0000800-F00008FF, IRQ: 11. In the conflicting device list, it
says, "Input/Output Range E300 - E3FF used by: VIA CPU to AGP Controller".

i am currently in Safe Mode, running the Multi-AV programs I had downloaded
from the mentioning of it earlier. when the scaning of these are completed,
i'll restart and check on this in normal mode.

no problem in normal mode.

the Multi-AV programs found something named NetTool.Win32.PsKill. finding
how to remove that brought me some other programs, CWShredder and MicroWorld
AntiVirus Spyware Toolkit Utility. CWShredder found CWS.AgentUD; MicroWorld
Anti Virus found w32/rbot-ank, troj/taladra, bearshare, weatherbug (shown
twice), 180solutions, ezula, media tickets, whenu.savenow (shown twice),
cws.therealsearch; it's also found at least 500 errors in the registry.

....this just keeps getting worse and worse... it's looking more and more
like i should just reinstall... :-(

 

[Malke]

:

no problem in normal mode.

the Multi-AV programs found something named NetTool.Win32.PsKill.
finding how to remove that brought me some other programs, CWShredder
and MicroWorld AntiVirus Spyware Toolkit Utility. CWShredder found
CWS.AgentUD; MicroWorld Anti Virus found w32/rbot-ank, troj/taladra,
bearshare, weatherbug (shown twice), 180solutions, ezula, media
tickets, whenu.savenow (shown twice), cws.therealsearch; it's also
found at least 500 errors in the registry.

...this just keeps getting worse and worse... it's looking more and
more like i should just reinstall... :-(

So, we find out that it really wasn't the *computer* that was
stupid... ;-)

Only you can make the decision whether to format/clean-install or try
and get the malware off your machine. XP is far more robust than
earlier MS operating systems, but if you've got your data backed up it
might be better to start afresh. Make sure you patch your system with
SP2 and have a firewall and av enabled before you connect to the
Internet the first time.

Malke

 

[Guest]

So, we find out that it really wasn't the *computer* that was
stupid... ;-)

yup! but, it got thru spywareblaster, spybot, lavasoft adaware, ms
antispyware, and avast antivirus... which is really what sucks. and i don't
have my disks at home since i'm here for thanksgiving break...