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To Make A Long Story Long
Or
How I Spent My Friday
by Hewie Poplock
September 27, 2003
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This actually begins last weekend. I was preparing a presentation for my Computer User Group and installed a firewall program, Zone Alarm, to talk about protecting a computer. It
was protecting my laptop system's access to the Internet while protecting others from getting to my system, as it was designed.
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This week I decided to abandon using my USB Wireless network adapter and purchased a new PC Card wireless network adapter that uses a newer, faster connection, if certain hardware is
available. That's another story for another time.
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The new card arrived, complete with mail-in rebate form. Ah, a bargain! Before installing it, I decided to uninstall the firewall, so it would not cause any problems. Boy, was I wrong.
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I followed the instructions for the new adapter by installing the software drivers first, then placed the new PC Card wireless adapter in the slot. Bingo, it saw the card, saw the
wireless access point, and then … and then, it didn't work. It couldn't see the network and it couldn't see the Internet. I checked all of the settings and the IP address was totally wrong. In
addition the settings said that it was generating an Automatic Private IP Address.
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I decided to give up and use the original USB network adapter and it had the same problem with a similar IP address. Now, I was really frustrated.
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After hours of testing, deleting, installing and checking I came to the conclusion that my problem was not easily fixable and required some research. It was time to "Google it." So
I started searching Google for the Automatic IP and discovered that the IP address was not from another network, but was being generated by my computer, because it couldn't find a DHCP server. If you are not a
techie, stay with me, anyway.
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OK, now I have a lead. I am not seeing the Access Point to get an IP address so my laptop generates its own. I needed to clear the address. I found some help and discovered that
Windows XP has a command line program, ipconfig.exe, that should clear the problem. After about an hour of trying it and then researching more, I concluded that wasn't fixing it either.
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I went back to Google and did some more searching. One site said that firewalls could cause problems similar to what I was experiencing, especially if it had been uninstalled. It
mentioned that settings were left in the registry even if the firewall was completely removed. It mentioned by name that Zone Alarm was the worst and McAfee wasn't far behind. Both had been installed on my
system.
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That article gave some registry fixes that may solve the problem, but did say that it was a winsock registry setting that was mostly hosed. The fix seemed only a possible fix and I
decided to do more research. I found an article on one of the message boards that said they found a program that fixed a problem that sounded identical to mine. The program was called WinsockFix. I
downloaded and took a look at it. It gave the step by step commands that needed to be completed and it was aimed at the most technical, far more than me.
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However, by clicking on one button within the program it would take care of all of the steps, including the rebooting the system when done. Before starting, I clicked another button in the
program to back up the registry.
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I ran the WinsockFix program and it completed each of the following steps.
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- Detect your current Operating System
- Release the IP address, taking you "Offline"
- Reset the TCP stack using Netsh.exe (Windows XP only)
- Delete the current Registry TCP and Winsock Values
- Import new "Working" Registry Values
- Backup any Current "Hosts" file
- Replace the "Hosts" file with a default one
- Reboot the Computer
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When the system rebooted, the USB Network adapter worked properly, immediately. I took it off and inserted the PC Card adapter, activated it and it also worked! Twenty four hours of
frustration, testing, researching, and finally success. I grabbed a good drink and relaxed. What a day!
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The program that finally fixed things was WinsockFix.exe and can be downloaded from http://members.shaw.ca/installations/WinsockFix.zip . Here is a screenshot
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Thanks for sticking with my long story to this point. It shows that things are not as easy as they should be. Not all programs completely remove themselves when uninstalling, but
there are some great techies who can help us fix the messes, once we identify the problem.
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