My machine is behaving very strangely of late, and their are several symptoms I can describe, but I have not got a clue what the problem is. symptom 1) When I boot my machine (dell laptop) and look at computers near me, I can see and access all the machines on my LAN. However after a little while of using my machine, going back to computers near me reveals that most of the machines have disapeared and I cant access them any more. symptom 2) I can ping other machines from my machine successfully, but trying it the other way round does not work (i.e. when pinging my machine from somewhere else it does not respond). symptom 3) There are other problems that seem to be related to my machine not responding to packets sent to it (or not even recieving them). Note that internet and email appear to work fine, although sometimes they just stop working even though I am still connected. Plus note there is nothing wrong with my network setup, as I have been doing the same things with the same setup on a daily basis successfully. Thus it seems to be something seriously wrong internally. I thought it might be a virus, but I've done thorough virus checks and cleans, and dont know of any virus with these symptoms. Plus I've got all firewalls and things that could filter packets turned off now. I'm way beyond my tolerance limit, so has anyone got any ideas whatsoever apart from the rudimentary reinstall windows ?????

Have you tried a different NIC, cable and from a different drop. If you get the same results with these items replaced then reloading Windows may be your only option.

well yes I have, and plus I've also got an app on a PDA and I used to communicate between my laptop and the PDA via wireless LAN cards via port/ip, and I get similar symptoms with this setup. The laptop does not appear to recieve packets via the PDA. So clearly it cant be the NICs. Its something more fundamental then that which is why I think its something to do with windows or otherwise some other malicious software on my machine. can you think of anything else, I'm beginning to lose the will to live Uz

Look in your startup stuff and make sure you don't have savenow and web enhance installed these apps can cause wierd network problems. I recommend you do this with the MSConfig that comes with Windows XP. If you don't have access to a XP box, then you can download the MSConfig.zip from my website.

"The laptop does not appear to recieve packets via the PDA. So clearly it cant be the NICs." Wrong conclusion. Sure sounds like your nic is bad to me. All of your tests indicate a failing nic to me. From the browse list issue to the ping tests. Replace the nic in the laptop. Or reinstall the nic drivers and config. If still no go replace the nic.

I have scoured my startup files, and registry for suspicious programs over the last couple of days, and I dont appear to have the two you mentioned or any other obvious thing there. In fact I'm down to the bare minimums. Any other ideas ? could there be any windows service malfunctioning that could cause this ? I really appreciate your help by the way, and thanks for msconfig - I've been looking for that !!!!

TO WANDERER, I think you misunderstood- I have two network interfaces. The reason I dont think its the NICs is because it would be a bit of a coincidence that both my wireless LAN card and my wired card both got screwed at exactly the same time, and in the same way. Plus how come some of the network stuff still works like the internet and email ? Still I guess I could try to reinstall/update drivers, but I doubt this is going to make a difference.