UPFRONT: The issue was repaired, but the cause was not officially found; I hope this helps direct others to their solutions ................................... I recently had an issue that many others have had, one day, the laptop just stopped resolving DNS HOSTNAMES. I consulted my Circle of Networking Engineers and Guru's (CNEG). Our interest in this case became aroused as every diagnosis and repair option was exercised with no positive results. We're Networking Engineers afterall, something like this is worth the effort to uncover in the case it happens again. There's also plenty of evidence that it has happened to many, with articles written by Microsoft as well as many other High-Status Engineers online. We tried every that made sence. I'd list them, but frankly, somebody else has already listed them, and none of them worked. Source Articles worth researching: Microsoft Support Article 299357 Microsoft Support Article 300986 Troubleshooting Basic TCP/IP Problems LinuxQuestions.org Computing.net TCP/IP Articles on Microsoft LAN Issues After days of research and diagnostics, attempts to reverse engineer the issue and all the potential solutions were applied, the resolution ended up being simple. 1. Open the LAN Stastics Window. This window shows you the current LAN State, displaying the STATUS, Connection Duration, Speed of Connection, and Activity : BYTES SENT / RECIEVED. This window also has a button for PROPERTIES and DISABLE / ENABLE. The version of XP I am running includes an additional TAB labeled "SUPPORT". 2. Click on the SUPPORT TAB. Here is where you will see the ADDRESS TYPE, IP ADDRESS, SUBNET, and GATEWAY Address. There is a button for DETAILS which will give you the MAC, and the rest of the IP ADDRESS Information you'll ever need to know about your connection, much like "C:\IPCONFIG /ALL". There is also a "REPAIR" button, which does several resets to your Networking devices and protocols. This is the button that repaired the computers ability to RESOLVE DNS HOSTNAMES. Somehow, somewhere, something got gunked up or corrupted, and this button did the trick. I'd like to know exactly what this button does, specifically, and will research it just to compair our efforts to the button's command list in the hopes that the actual "issue" is discovered. In the end, I still do not know WHAT the issue was, because the REPAIR button executed a bunch of commands so fast, and without creating a log. The collective diagnosis of the issue was agreed on by myself and the several Networking Engineers that have worked with this problem. We decided the most likely cause to be the TCP STACK on the NIC needed to be reset. In short, this particular solution was: CONTROL PANNEL > NETWORK CONNECTIONS > [YOUR LAN CONNECTION STATUS] > SUPPORT TAB > REPAIR CONNECTION BUTTON KEYWORDS: can ping IP but not HOSTNAME DNS RESOLVES IP NOT RESOLVING HOSTNAME

Flushing DNS probably would have worked too. "So won’t you give this man his wings What a shame To have to beg you to see We’re not all the same What a shame" - Shinedown

Repair does 4 things that could be done from command line. It is simple way to fix some things. "Best Practices", Event viewer, host file, perfmon, antivirus, anti-spyware, Live CD's, backups, are in my top 10

Yeah, we thought so too, Flushing the DNS was on the list of things that did not work. What 4 things does the reset button do? It looked like it did more than that, but I'm not certian.

These are the actions Windows takes when you click Repair: Attempts to renew the DHCP lease, if the connection obtains its IP address through DHCP, using a broadcast message. Flushes the Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) cache using the command arp -d * Flushes the NetBIOS cache using the command nbtstat -R Flushes the DNS cache using the command ipconfig /flushdns Reregisters the NetBIOS name and IP address with WINS using the command nbtstat -RR Reregisters the computer name and IP address with DNS using the command ipconfig /registerdns From WindowsITPro magazine.

Perfect! I researched it and found just that this morning, your reply better defines what I was going to write. :) The only action on that list we didn't do was the NBTSTAT reset. Now we know! Whee! I hope this helps others. Thanks a bunch for taking your time to reply with the info.