Have a Linksys 802.1 1b 4-port router, that I use to share my DSL connection at home. Have 1 wired PC & 1 wireless laptop working fine. On 2nd PC, previously was connecting by wireless but kept having connection drop. Then picked up some viruses or something & it stopped working completely. Have moved it & now I'm hardwired to the router, still keep getting the autoconfig IP address. Here's my ipconfig /all results: Windows IP config - Host Name: mike-xt00c6pj4a Primary DNS Suffix: [blank] Node Type: unknown IP Routing Enabled: No WINS Proxy Enabled: No Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection - Connection-specific DNS Suffix: [blank] Description: NVIDIA nForce MCP Networking Controller Phys Address: 00-E0-4C-B0-55-50 DHCP Enabled: Yes Autoconfig Enabled: Yes Autoconfig IP: 169.254.45.41 Subnet Mask: 255.255.0.0 Default Gateway: [blank] I have PINGed the adapter and seems ok. Also have green light on router so it seems to be seeing the PC. I have tried release & renew - get a message back on renew "an operation was attempted on something that is not a socket". I'm thinking its virus/trojan because it used to work & no hardware has changed. Bad news is I can't get to Internet to update AV definitions! Appreciate any ideas/suggestions!! sorry for the long post Mike heming4@pacbell.net

If you think it could be a virus, remove the HDD from the PC and slave it into your other PC and run a virus scan on it there. You could even connect to an online virus scan like Trend Micro or eTrust antivirus and run that over and above whatever AV program you have installed just to be sure. Run anti spyware on it as well. Then when it's all done, put it back in it's original PC and try again. If it still doesn't work, you may have to give some serious thought to backing up any data on it you wish to keep and reinstalling.

Thanks Curt. I've never slaved a drive onto another PC before, do I need an external adapter for that? Maybe I can burn AV to a cd and load it on the problem PC? I kept playing last night and was able to assign a static IP to the PC, and ping the default gateway. Still can't get to the Internet though. Any ideas on that? Could this all be a browser hijacker problem? Mike heming4@pacbell.net