Laptop will connect to network, won't do anything

Here's a fun one. I have a Dell Inspiron 1545 running Win7 Home Premium. It recently crashed after installing ITunes. After getting it to reboot by going into Safe Mode and then rebooting normally, it won't get out to the internet. It will connect to a Wi-Fi network but will give an error message that it has limited connectivity. Same goes for a wired connection. I uninstalled and reinstalled both adapters. System Restore fails on every restore point I've tried. I went into the adapter properties and found that I could not get into the TCP/IP v.4 properties. It is checked but properties is grayed out. I tried to reset the IP stack using netsh int ip reset resetlog.txt and I get an error the following helper dll can not be loaded wshelper.dll. Resetting the winsock catalog with netsh winsock reset gives the same error. I tried running an app called LSP fix but that completed and did not fix the issue.

I am out of ideas other than a nuke and pave. Any thoughts?

 

Shut off modem & router, and all equipment connected to the LAN on the router. Then reboot modem, let sync. Then router and let sync with modem. Then turn on laptop. If still getting limited connectivity, do a ipconfig /flushdns.

Limited connectivity can be nothing more than the adapter needing to be reset, which can mean also uninstalling the device, and reinstalling after booting up. My wifi nic on my netbook will go limited if the channel changes on the router, after a while, it will find itself and restore back to full connectivity.

 

If brownizs's suggestion does not help, try the following command and then see if you can reset Winsock and TCP/IP.

netsh /add helper wshelper.dll

 

Hi mate , another suggestion is

http://windows7themes.net/winsock-fix-for-windows-7.html

if another members suggestion failed try it !! :wave

 

I appreciate the comments. I did manage to get it working again by doing a system restore back as far as I could go and by some miracle it worked. It also restored the all the crapware I removed last month.

But I found a new problem. After removing several toolbars and a scamware registry cleaner, IE has now dropped dead. It was working before all the uninstalls but now when I launch it, it just sits on a blank page and won't load google. Upgrading to IE 9 didn't fix the issue.

 

Firewall would be the next guess, if you are using a third party software.

http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...ny-pages/8d064515-896f-4e4a-9398-809371362c7b

 

I'm not sure if it's the firewall. I uninstalled the expired MacAfee suite and am using Windows Security Essentials and Malwarebytes. I installed Firefox on it and that is working fine right now but IE is still dead.

 

Open IE, click on Tools then Internet Options and last the Security tab.
Click on the load defaults and see if that fixes the problem.

You can go back later and tweak some things if you do not want everything at the default setting.