Friday, February 18, 2011

Wireless enabled and no internet connection

The following is a repost of an unusual problem encountered a few years ago while troubleshooting a friend's Windows Vista laptop:

I installed a free anti-virus software.  After the installation, I encountered one problem after another.  Windows Firewall connection turned off and became disabled.  I was unable to connect to the Internet even though my wireless connection was showing as enabled.  Internet Explorer was showing a "Page cannot be displayed" error.

I googled "wireless connection showing enabled and no Internet", as I had never before encountered that problem. A blog entitled, Repair and reset Windows Vista TCPIP Winsock Catalog Corruption popped up and described the situation. It was easy and solved the problem in five short steps.  Be sure to click on the link for an explanation as to what caused the Winsock corruption.  This fix could save you a lot of potential headache. Here is the Microsoft Knowledge Base article for  How to determine and to recover from Winsock2 corruption in Windows Server 2003, in Windows XP, and in Windows Vista.





Determine whether the Winsock key is infected:

1. Click on the Start button.
2.  Type Cmd in the Start Search text box.
3.  Press Ctrl-Shift-Enter keyboard shortcut to run Command Prompt as Administrator.  Allow elevation request.
4. Expand Components, Expand Network, Click Protocol
5. Ten sections appear under Protocol. The following names will appear in the headings if the Winsock2 key is undamaged:
  • MSAFD Tcpip [TCP/IP]
  • MSAFD Tcpip [UDP/IP]
  • MSAFD Tcpip [TCP/IPv6]
  • MSAFD Tcpip [UDP/IPv6]
  • RSVP UDP Service Provider
  • RSVP TCP Service Provider
  • RSVP UDPv6 Service Provider
  • RSVP TCPv6 Service Provider
  • MSAFD NetBIOS [\Device\NetBT_Tcpip...
  • MSAFD NetBIOS [\Device\NetBT_Tcpip...
  • MSAFD NetBIOS [\Device\NetBT_Tcpip...
  • MSAFD NetBIOS [\Device\NetBT_Tcpip...
  • MSAFD NetBIOS [\Device\NetBT_Tcpip...
  • MSAFD NetBIOS [\Device\NetBT_Tcpip...
If the names are anything different from those in this list, the Winsock2 key is corrupted, or you have a third-party add-on such as proxy software installed.






If there are more than ten sections in the list, you have third-party additions installed. 

If there are fewer than ten sections, there is information missing. 

To resolve the issue in Windows Vista, do the following: 

If you have a third-party add-on installed, the name of the add-on will replace the letters "MSAFD" in the list. 
1.  Click on the Start button.
2.  Type Cmd in the Start Search text box.
3.  Press Ctrl-Shift-Enter keyboard shortcut to run Command Prompt as Administrator.  Allow elevation request.
4.  Type netsh winsock reset in the Command Prompt shell, and then  press the Enter key.
5.  Restart the computer.

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