Our house is wireless. The main cable runs into the wireless unit and the 6 computers running off of it (big family) work fine. The downstairs PC, the main one for the house, is hooked up directly to the router through a working Ethernet cord. It has never had a problem with connection. Coming back from vacation, my family tells me (who knows a lot about pc's) that it is not working. The problem is that it cannot renew the ip address. Although the other computers work fine, this one cannot renew. I have tried ipconfig /release and ipconfig /renew - the latter gives me an error message: "An error occurred while renewing interface local area connection : an operation was attempted on something that is not a socket" I have no prior restore points to fall back on. All I have is the hope that one of you cna point me in the right direction. Keep in mind no changes were made to any options and it has always worked perfectly. My best guess is that spyware or hijackers (which my big family allow to run rampant)somehow corrupted a file. I have since cleaned out the cpu, but could use some help. Thanks, Brian

well i would reinstall the NIC drivers. before you do that though, you could wait for someone else to suggest a solution, i;ve never heard of that happening all outta nowhere. but if nobody replys and you need that comp, try reinstalling FBI Agent AIM: EliteAssassin187

I agree with FBI Agent but I would also do a loopback on your NIC. The loopback address allows for a reliable method of testing the functionality of an Ethernet card and its drivers and software without a physical network. At a DOS\command prompt type; ping 127.0.0.1 <enter> If you get a reply back then your NIC is fine but if you don't there might be something wrong with the drivers or the card itself.

You need to isolate the problem. Is it your PC, or maybe your router, or maybe your ethernet cable? 1. Go to one of the PC's that is currently up and running. Write down the IP address information (IP address, subnet mask, default Gateway, DNS servers) Then turn that PC off. Go back to your main PC and manually add that IP information. Does your PC now connect to the internet? If so, you have eliminated your PC and ethernet cable. If not, ping IP address 127.0.0.1. A good response proves your network software and the internal ethernet controller is good. Unfortunately, the connector where the ethernet cable plugs in may still be suspect. 2. Verify your ethernet cable is working. When your PC broadcasts for an IP from the DHCP source, the request might be getting through but maybe you're not hearing the response. That would indicate a cable problem in that the receive pairs have something wrong. (a protocol analyzer would tell you for sure, you can download ethereal for free) 3. And this is the most likely cause.... your DHCP source (either the router or the WAP, whichever you set up) may have reached some sort of limit on the addresses it will lease out. If you can view the clients served from the DHCP source it may tell you. I've had this happen to me on my XP Pro device, it registers several "ghost" sessions which filled up my DHCP pool. Had to power reset to clear... I never did find the source of that issue as my firewall died and I had to replace it with a Cisco PIX. Haven't seen that problem again. But of course I've lost my laptop's hard drive too which could explain the erroneous problem. At any rate ( and to prevent me from rambling on and on and on.......) 1. Go manual 2. reset DHCP source 3. look at reloading/rebuilding NIC and or PC. If you've been compromised by a virus, your networking protocol software may have become corrupt. If so then you'll never know the extent of the corruption. If you wipe out the hard drive and reload it all from scratch, only then can you be assured that you have fully erradicated any spyware, viruses or hacker bots implanted on your system. If you don't have a hard ware firewall I strongly advise you to get one. ** 127.0.0.1 is the universal internal loopback IP address. Every NIC should respond to that ping if the network software was loaded and installed properly. It's an RFC thing. Hope this helps.... ~DB

I just have one question. Is the wireless NIC you're having problems with a Netgear? MCSE, MCSA Messaging, baby!