ipconfig "internal error"

Future Blues

So I was using the wireless network at my mom's pad yesterday and a while after my mom went to sleep the internet went down. The modem and router are in her room, but I went down the hallway and glanced into that room and noticed that both the modem and router seemed to be working fine. With that in mind, I started to troubleshoot my own machine thinking that it had to be something on my end.

The first thing I realized was that I was dealing with something I'd never seen before:



Using my phone, I looked up that error on Google and came up with a variety of troubleshooting measures including checking drivers, looking for errors with individual devices in the Device Manager, and repairing a corrupted winsock or tcp/ip stack and/or host file.

I haven't changed any drivers recently, so I discounted that. I checked the Device Manager and found no errors or conflicts. I couldn't figure out how to check for a corrupted tcp/ip stack and/or winsock (at the time) because the browser on my phone sucks and I couldn't really check out the graphical walkthrough easily. I still haven't done this, but I did figure out a few other things.

First off, I discovered that if I disabled my ethernet controller (an Intel(R) PRO/1000 MT Mobile Connection) I could successfully invoke the ipconfig command. After that, I could re-enable the device and still use the command. However, if I attempted to "Repair" my wireless connection or Restart, or attempted to use the ipconfig /renewdns switch (which was something I was doing while I was trying to troubleshoot my connection attempts) the error would crop up again. I'll also say that I'm able to access the internet at my Dad's place via ethernet (although now that I think of it, utorrent always gives me a yellow (connection problem) symbol whenever I'm using it over there). Therefore I'm not really sure if it's a hardware problem. Meanwhile, the Device Manager doesn't give me any errors on any of my network hardware.

Today I found out that my lack of connectivity may have been the fault of the modem itself. After I restarted the modem I was able to connect over the wireless network again, but the ipconfig error is really bothering me. I ran a virus scan which came up negative... but it did mention there were some "changes" to a few system files. I'm not sure what this means, but in the bigger context it really bothers me.





With all this in mind, I'm considering calling IBM and seeing if they have anything to say about the problem, but for the moment I'm stuck in the house waiting for a phone call so I thought I'd post this here and see if anyone knows anything that I don't.

(Obligatory Flickr Link to keep the photos up (Ignore it): Photo hotlinks courtesy of my Flickr)

Pheezer

The cable modem is not causing that error. That wouldn't even begin to make sense.

Try the instructions at these help pages:
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=811259
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=299357

Also next time try googling a little harder. You said you read that "repairing a corrupted winsock or tcp/ip stack and/or host file" could fix it. All you had to do was google "repair winsock xp" and you'd have found those pages.

Once you've tried those, come back and tell us what happens.

Future Blues

Will do.

The problem was that I was browsing on my PHONE which has a terrible browser. I couldn't access the MS Support pages while I was originally trying to diagnose the problem.

Now, according to MsInfo32 winsock is not corrupted. I also reset the tcp/ip stack as the second info document specified. The error has not changed.

However, I also plugged my computer into an ethernet cable over here and discovered that utorrent gives me a green. Thus, my network at my Dad's house is borked, but my ethernet controller in my computer seems to work fine.

Additionally, when my computer was connected via ethernet the ipconfig command ran without error.

I'm starting to suspect this is some kind of driver issue. I'm using the latest drivers from Lenovo and Intel specific to my model number.

I guess a call to IBM is the next step here.

Edit: Any ideas on what the "Virus results" in AVG mean? Should I just ignore the fact that those system files were "changed"?

Pheezer

It seems a little odd, but I suppose it's not entirely out of the scope of possibility that windows update had a hand in that.

Future Blues

So after talking to IBM for half an hour, they came to the conclusion that the only option for support that remains is to call Microsoft. Now, granted this guy didn't sound like a genius or anything but he told me that he's "never seen anything like this," and didn't really have any idea what the error might mean.

I'm still gunning for some sort of driver conflict, but this is getting crazier by the minute.

Figure A:

Yeah, that's the connection I'm posting this on RIGHT NOW. WTF?

I don't know. Next step is finding an XP disk and installing the support tools, I guess. At least the error appears to be mostly benign at the moment.

devoir

Uninstall your wireless driver and then install it again.

If this doesn't resolve it, try this. http://www.snapfiles.com/get/winsockxpfix.html

Pheezer

Something is really weird with your laptop. If you can, it'll probably be way faster to backup, format, and restore than it will be to solve the root cause of this problem.

devoir

I wouldn't be so hasty. My boss received a new laptop from Dell that had a similar problem. The steps I mentioned in my previous post fixed it. Or rather, the removing the driver and reloading it did. Although it's possible I've completely missed if he's already tried those things; I didn't see a mention of them.

Future Blues

Yeah, I haven't had a chance to try futzing with the drivers. I'll do that tomorrow and report back. I'd do it now, but I'm dead tired and on headache meds. Which in moonspeak means goodnight.

Winsock: There are two good reasons why I really don't want to fuck with the winsock. According to MSInfo, it looks fine. That's reason 1. Reason 2 is that my laptop has an IRDA port, and a Bluetooth module and a few other special IBM winsock entries that I need and don't know how to go about reinstalling if I were to nuke the winsock.

devoir

The Winsock fix I linked just clears out the registry entries and rebuilds them. There's no replacing drivers or other IP components. I don't know if that's the same as the Microsoft KB article that was linked, but I wasn't trying to follow up on that. I don't generally check MSinfo to see if it thinks that Winsock is b0rked - weird networking shit generally tells you that. :P And I've never seen it do harm to properly functioning Winsock stack.