Local Area Connection

I'm posting on behalf of my friend which now has to connection to the "interweb" whatsoever.

He gets some "Limited or no connectivity" bubble on his Local Area Connection, so he decided to install another Network card and still gets the same error. His internet was working fine till a second that the power flashed on and off in the house. After that, is when he started getting that info bubble. Could it be his Bellsouth DSL modem?? Is there something he can do to fix his problem?? He gets a 169 IP which supposedly means he has a winSOCK error or something. Atleast thats what the stupid techs at Bellsouth said.

Can anyone help?? Any suggestions??

Thanks for your time,
Brian

 

Brian,

That limited or no connectivity message doesn't necessarily mean that anything is wrong. That limited or no connectivity message means that the computer is configured to obtain an ip address automatically but unable to communicate with the DHCP server. This is new with Service Pack 2 (SP2) for Windows XP. If you are having problems connecting broadband then try these suggestions below:

1. Turn off the cable/dsl modem and router and wait about 5 seconds. Then plug it back in and let it try to rebuild.
2. The network card is configured to automatically sense speed and duplex settings but isn't doing it correctly. Set those options manually, as shown here:
   
   http://www.practicallynetworked.com/sharing/troubleshoot/networkcard.htm
3. Try downloading the latest compatible drivers from the manufacturer's website for the network card.

It's hard to say that this is a winsock corruption without knowing more details. To determine that you have a winsock problem, please see the following Microsoft Knowledge Base article.

How to determine and recover from Winsock2 corruption
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;811259

There is a new netsh command in Service Pack 2 that can rebuild the winsock catalog.

Open the command prompt, and then type the following line:

netsh winsock reset catalog