Something in startup breaks internet connection

Hello,

After installing the avast! virus software, (a couple of boots later, and perhaps unrelated), the HP laptop running windows XP SP3 on AMD Turion chipset takes a really long time to come up now and once up does not have internet access. It has an assigned IP address, but is not able to ping anyone on the network. Other computers on the same network have no problems. Tried swapping out the cable and the port of the switch to no avail. This was a failure that showed up after a reboot, things were fine the prior boot, then next boot total failure.

It appears that early on in the boot, the internet was working and an IP address was assigned, but something later is screwing it up.

We tried: 'netsh int ip reset c:\resetlog.txt' but that did not help.

Once up, ipconfig -renew fails to contact the DHCP server.

I'm pretty sure this is a software issue, but I don't want to reinstall the operating system if I can avoid it.

Ideas?

Thanks.

-William

 

Looking further, it appears the issue is related to the uninstall of ZoneAlarm! Tried to follow the instructions here: http://www.geekstogo.com/forum/Zone-Alarm-removal-t78285.html to clean out the registry settings for Zone alarm, but it didn't seem to help.

 

William, I read that link and apparently that fix didn't work for the original poster at G2G either. Despite its shortcomings, there were some interesting tidbits contained within.

I would recommend you wait for someone here who may be able to provide specific guidance but if you are stuck and frustrated and no one responds in a reasonable amount of time, I'll walk you through a brute force removal. Please understand, I don't use zone alarm and would prefer that your guidance comes from one with in-depth knowledge of your version.

I'll continue to follow this thread and if nothing helpful develops, we'll take it out.

 

Thanks Rockster2U!

 

Ping into failing machine works

Hello,

Correction to prior post, the 'ipconfig -renew' is working after boot up, but the ping fails to router and other machines on same local network.

However, if I ping from another machine that is working on the network back to either the wireless or wired IP assigned addresses of the non-working laptop it works correctly!

C:\Documents and Settings\wkf>ping 192.168.0.101

Pinging 192.168.0.101 with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 192.168.0.101: bytes=32 time=27ms TTL=128
Reply from 192.168.0.101: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=128
Reply from 192.168.0.101: bytes=32 time=32ms TTL=128
Reply from 192.168.0.101: bytes=32 time=1ms TTL=128

Ping statistics for 192.168.0.101:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 1ms, Maximum = 32ms, Average = 15ms

C:\Documents and Settings\wkf>ping 192.168.0.106

Pinging 192.168.0.106 with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 192.168.0.106: bytes=32 time=142ms TTL=128
Reply from 192.168.0.106: bytes=32 time=165ms TTL=128
Reply from 192.168.0.106: bytes=32 time=187ms TTL=128
Reply from 192.168.0.106: bytes=32 time=5ms TTL=128

Ping statistics for 192.168.0.106:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 5ms, Maximum = 187ms, Average = 124ms

Thanks.

-William

 

What's the IP address of the PC you are pinging from?

It looks to me like you have two IP networks. My guess you have two devices acting as DHCP server and they are giving out conflicting IP addresses.

 

Sorry, the above post was wrong, I've edited to correct the mistake on the ping result.

There are two IP addresses because there is the wired network and the wireless network. There is only on DHCP server, the router, that has both wired and wireless connections. No one else on the network has the same IP address. I was pinging from 192.168.0.105. The laptop not working has 106 assigned to the wireless and 101 assigned to the wired connection.

Booting in safe mode with networking enabled doesn't help either.

 

Router troubles?

Well things are getting worse for the internet. I happened to reboot another computer, and now it is having the similar symptoms. Internet connectivity was fine before the reboot, and now not working after. It is not acquiring an IP address. If I try to browse to the router at 192.168.0.1 it fails. I'm afraid to reboot the router since I might lose internet completely and have a hard time resolving this issue. Ideas?

Thanks.

-William

 

William,

I was getting ready to post and figured I'd look at running services related to Zone Alarm. Long story short - found this authored by FAX at Zone Alarm forums.

What I was going to suggest before running into the above was to first turn off any ZA related services that may still be present and running. Secondly, I'd download and install RegSeeker and using it, do a search for Zone Alarm related registry entries and then remove them. Third, go in and manually delete any/all ZA related folders and files. Don't overlook Application Data for all users and each user individually and Common Files. Forth, empty pre-fetch and then reboot. If still no joy, open IE and look at security and if necessary purge ZA related entries from trusted sites. That's done the trick for me when I've encountered ZA issues after someone messed up an uninstall but perhaps you should wait for Reggie's next instruction set before trying either of these two approaches to cleaning up ZA.

I'll head back to the sidelines and watch for a while.

 

Router Reset => Original laptop still offline

Resetting the router got the other computer working again, but still no success with the laptop that had the original issue. Will try more ZA registry and other clean ups to see if that helps.

Thanks.