Can't connect to internet...

Ugh, my original message got timed out and now I have to rewrite this whole bloody thing again...

Anyway, what happened was that a couple days ago, I cleaned a massive amount of viruses from my comp (this was after my account got suspended by my isp and it was due to these viruses spamming the heck out of it). The account got unsuspended and I deleted all the viruses, which also involved following Symantec's instructions to delete the viruses manually via .exe and deleting the virus's registry entries.

However, my deletion of the viruses was all done offline. The only reason I know the account was unsuspended is because I was able to access the internet just fine via another computer hooked up to a router to the modem for the internet.

So, when I was finally done the virus cleaning, I rebooted and placed my comp's cable back into the router. The problem though, is that my computer could not connect to the internet! My computer is sending packets but nothing is being returned. The other computer hooked up to the router is fine but this one wasn't.

So I did the usual - restart the modem, then the router. Just restarted the router. I tried hooking my computer up to the modem and STILL the same problem!

I've spent the past two days trying to find out different things but still no luck. I was wondering if, hoping this forum is active, someone could help me out in figuring out my problem.

The computer with the internet problem runs Windows XP Professional, and uses a RealTek RTL8139 Family PCI Fast Ethernet NIC.

(I also want to add though, that from Network Connections -> Local Area Connection, under TCP/IP for this card, the buttons for "Install" and "Properties" are visible while the button for "Uninstall" is faded - is this normal or does this mean that the TCP/IP for the card hasn't been installed yet? Because I'm thinking it MIGHT have something to do with the trouble connecting - or if it's normal and I'm just stretching for hints, hehe)

Any help would be appreciated! Thanks!

-Hydra

 

Hi Hydragon and welcome to MGs,
If you had a massive amount of viruses you should go to the malware forum and do the procedures in the Read and Run Me First sticky. The way these things are these days, they can reintroduce themselves on rebooting.
As to the timing out and retyping, be sure to tick the "Remember Me" box when logging in.
The grayed out Uninstall box is normal on TCP/IP.
You can check out your network card in device manager to see if there are any problems with it.
You can also go to this link to try to work through your connection problem (1 of the MG network experts, cat5e, wrote up the site) -
http://www.ezlan.net/debug.html
If you run into problems, post back.
HTH

 

Thanks for the reply! I can't do all the steps unfortunately because that computer lacks the internet to do download some of the software (and the comp I'm posting from has problems with it's floppy disk drive, cd burner, AND it's USB port >_<)

I'm confident that I'm up to date with my virus scanning (as most of the steps of Read and Run Me I've done already). So I then proceeded to http://www.ezlan.net/debug.html. Of the list of steps, the one which I thought applied to me most was the TCP/IP refresh, so I went and reset the TCP/IP via "netsh int ip reset c:\resetlog.txt"

Restarted my comp...and still no good. To avoid any overhead problems, I connected the computer directly to my modem and still nothing's happening.

However, I do notice that when I am directly connected to the modem, that when I try to "repair" the connection, I get a message that "renewing the ip" has failed. Which I find funny cause I'm directly connected to the bloody modem.

Any further ideas or instructions will help out a lot. Thanks!

 

You could try doing an ipconfig /all from the command line on both comps and comparing the results. See what the differences are and change the non-connecting comp settings.
Are you running a firewall? You might need to recheck the settings since you cleaned up the comp.

 

I just checked and neither computer has a firewall going on with it.

However, using ipconfig/all I found out that the only difference between the computers was that the Node types were different - on the computer that doesn't work, the Node Type is Hybrid. Meanwhile on the computer that works, the Node Type is Broadcast.

So I guess my question is, how do I turn my computer's Node Type from Hybrid to Broadcast? I think it's the closest thing to a solution I've gotten today, heh.

Edit: I'm just gonna add that from ipconfig/all I'm also seeing "primary dns suffix" and "connection-specific DNS Suffix" as blank. I checked on the net and the primary one seems normal to be blank, but the connection one I can't tell (I've seen examples of it being blank and it being filled in).

 

Crap, one more thing to add! My svchost for the comp with the internet problem is crazy atm. It's taking up more than 10% to even 50% of my resources at a time. It takes a lot of resourcs especially when my cable is connected to a router/modem.

I'm quite sure this isn't a virus because I've done the checks to ensure the only normal one running is from the System32 folder. My guess is that this resource hogging is related to the internet connection/NIC problem I'm having.

 

Hi Hydragon,
If you have XP Pro, depending on how current your comp is updated, you should have either the ICF (XP, XP SP1) or Windows Firewall (XP SP2).
I had a look at my task manager and I've got 6 instances of svchost running with about 1% of memory committed and 0 - 1% CPU resources. I still think you might have a problem with a virus.
Have you tried booting into Safe Mode with Networking to try to connect?
I did find a registry hack for changing the node type but I'm not familiar with the different types of nodes and what the different nodes do in reference to your connection. I don't want to do something that might make things worse.
I did find this MS article explaining the nodes -

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;160177

I'm at the limit of what I can help you with so someone else needs to jump in.
Sorry I couldn't be of more help.

 

Haha, it's okay. I changed my Node Type to broadcast but still no changes.

As for svchost, I have only 4 of them running. I'm curious to what svchosts you're running - mine has 2 under SYSTEM, one under Network and one under Local Services (the local services one which constantly takes up 30%+ of my resources).

At this point...I guess I'll just have to run the virus scan one more time (iin the usual safe mode + sys restore off thing). If nothing happens, I'm just going to back up all my stuff and probably restart my comp with the system backup it came with (it's one of those HP's with a backup hard drive)

I'm still welcome to any suggestions in the mean time though!

But LBMEST, thanks again for your help! Even if I couldn't find a fix for the comp, the help was definitely appreciated!

 

Hold up before you do anything drastic, someone else may have the solution and just hasn't seen this thread. Give it a little more time with this being the holidays.
As to my svchost, today I've got 5, 1 Local, 2 Network, 2 System. Opening a new tab in FF gives a small jump in CPU usage and then goes back to 0%.
Hope you have a good New Year and get your problem solved.

 

Happy New Year to you too, LBMEST!

haha, it's not that big of a step to reset my comp, but I guess I'll wait a bit. It's just a pain in the butt to rely on this slow old comp for internet

As for the svchost thing...I am also running WIndows XP pro - What I am missing from the list you showed is an svchost under Network. My best bet is that originally I ALSO had 5 svchosts but the fifth one got shut off somehow - that one coincidentally dealing with a Network. Again, I'm not sure (since maybe I only had 4 svchosts to begin with since upgrading to XP Pro from XP home) but I think it's an avenue worth exploring.

I will probably e-mail MS's website help thing and see what they say about how svchost affects networking - maybe it'll clue me in or hopefully even offer a solution as to why my connection does not work!

Edit: Hmm, I'll probably be getting some help via this link: http://support.microsoft.com/oas/default.aspx?ln=en-ca&prid=3518

 

Here's an MS article on svchost -
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=314056http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=314056
It doesn't really affect the networking per se, it responds to what network services are needed to run. You may have a service that is not be starting up? I don't know.

 

Yeah, I checked up on that svchost info on google (same link). Unfortunately it doesn't help me out too much x_x

Well, as for the svchost resource hogging thing, I noticed that that particular svchost is running a huge load of programs at once (using CMD then tasklist / SVC) so I'll investigate those problems.

While I wait for an e-mail response from that MS tech guy, I'm also lookin at those links below under "Similar Threads" - one of them is almost 99% the same problem as mine! Hopefully something comes up!

 

Update to that stuff I said - all those processes seem normal. I checked'em all over via http://www.ss64.com/ntsyntax/services.html.

However, upon scrolling through the user opinions on this site: http://www.neuber.com/taskmanager/process/svchost.exe.html, I managed to find out more people who had a similar problem to my own. From what I read/skimmed, there can be a varying number of svchosts that are normal to that computer.

(for the specific posts I was looking at, just go to that page, go Edit -> Find, and search for the words 'DNS')

Also, that an svchost can use a lot of resources and can be tied to the problem of lack of internet. From what I read, a couple people have had a similar problem dealing with DNSClient - a service that svchost.exe calls to use. I still have to find out more about this, but some have either disabled or turned it to "manual" and it apparently fixes the high resource problem for svchost.

This problem seems to relate to a XP Service Pack 2 glitch, and upon hearing that I thought about someone who also had a similar problem here: http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=97587, who managed to fix his internet prob by uninstalling Service Pack 2.

But first things first - I'm going to check up on DNSClient! Any tips would help out greatly!

 

If you had a bunch of viruses on the PC - it's possible one of them could have changed or damaged the settings/driver for your network adapter. One thing you could try is uninstalling the driver for the adapter, then uninstalling the adapter entry itself via the 'Device Manager." Then reboot the PC and let XP "find" the adapter and re-install it - or - you could cancel out of the hardware wizard and re-install the driver yourself.

This corrected a problem I had with connecting to my DSL via our home LAN a year or so ago. My wife's pc connected OK, but mine suddenly wasn't able to. I recall seeing some odd data in some of the Adapter settings; exactly what I can't now recall. When I tried to correct this the settings seemed to be 'locked'. An uninstall and re-install fixed the problem. I never did find out what had happened to cause this, nor has it ever happened again.

Hope this is of some help

 

Thanks for the suggestion! Unfortunately, I tried it a few times and still no luck. I'm pretty much at the end of really caring for this annoying problem.

In addition to the above idea, I tried working with the svchost services via information from this link: http://www.jasonn.com/turning_off_unnecessary_services_on_windows_xp/ which appeared to have helped solve my prob of svchost hogging resources, but irritatingly did not fix my bigger problem of the lack of internet connection.

And realizing that I don't have service pack 2 installed (not seen in Add/Remove program list), so the problem couldn't have originated from there (i.e. I went with a similar problem's solution here: http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?p=390359)

My finale is probably keeping in touch with an XP support dude from MS's site and see how that goes. I'm already halfway done prepping for a reformat (40 gigs to go) so if that's how it is, so be it.

Thanks to everyone for their help! I'll still be attentive to anyone's suggestions in the meantime!