Computer networking help needed
 

I have an employee that ran their personal laptop for some time without any protection. I've cleaned the drive using a good reg cleaner, run a virus sweep, and have reinstalled xp sp2.

The problem now is that the machine will not log on to either my wireless router for wifi access or to the router by hardwire. It won't accept an ip address-my system is 192. blah blah and the laptop shows an address of begining 169.254 blah blah regardless-even if I run ipconfig/release and reboot the machine.

I suspect there is something deep in the machine that's forcing it to use this ip for some nefarious purpose - of course, now that I can't get it on the internet in any fashion.

I have the original os discs and all the drivers, so I'll rebuild it if needed, but does the brain trust here have any thoughts that would save me some work??

Greg,

If you are concerned about spyware and virus programs, why not boot the machine with the restore CD in the drive, let it boot off of the CD and have it format the HD and install the OS fresh to make sure.

Start off fresh. I do it at least every year to get the deadwood out of my computer's OS.

Joe

Try this. I have used it many times to fix the type of problem you are having.

Winsock XP Fix

Agreed. Try the program. I have used it before.

and just FYI, the addresses beginning with 169.254.x.x are built into all Windows machines. If you try to put a PC on a network, but the PC can't contact a DHCP server then it automatically takes the 169.254.x.x address scheme.

Have you confirmed that the other PC is setup for dynamic addressing? When you plug them in does the PC see that it's plugged in, but it just doesn't get an address?

You might try specifying an address that should be good on your network to see if it can get on the network that way.

You guys rock!!!! This place rocks. I spent many hours on this trying to help her out-thought I was doing her a favor by removing the malware, and ended up screwing up the connectivity. The Winsock program fixed it .