Synetx Tek Tips

Suddenly your Vista computer decides to go on strike.  Network connections don’t work, wierd failure messages pop up, and you can’t even open up event viewer to see what the problem is!  You try to start Event logging or other services that should be started but aren’t and you get a “Error 1747: The authentication service is unknown” mesage.  You try other things and your get the fabulous “Error 10107: A system call that should never fail has failed” mesage. (go figure - Microsoft can take the time to create an error mesage the shouldn’t ever happen, but can’t take the time to actually fix the problem!)  Anyway the problem, believe it or not, is likely to be a messed up Winsock stack.  TCP/IP stack Winsock settings in Windows Vista may get corrupted, causing errors and problems with Internet connectivity. Corrupt Winsock or Windows sockets configuration can be due to a lot of reasons such as installation of a networking software, or due to virus, trojan or malware infection, or sometime even due to disinfection of spyware by security software.

When Winsock corrupts, the networking errors that you may face include unable to surf the Internet with “Page cannot be displayed” error message in Internet Explorer or AOL even though the DSL/ADSL/cable Internet connection is connected. Sometimes, Windows Firewall/Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) service is terminated as well.

To repair and reset the Windows Vista Winsock Stack:

1. Click on 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.

What netsh winsock reset command does is it resets Winsock Catalog to a clean state or default configuration. It removes all Winsock LSP (Layered Service Providers) previously installed, including the potential malfunctioned LSP that causes loss of network packets transmission failure. So all previously-installed LSPs must be reinstalled. This command does not affect Winsock Name Space Provider entries.

Note: To check which LSPs installed on your Vista system, use netsh winsock show catalog command.

ds

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 11th, 2008 at 7:48 am and is filed under Vista/7, Windows Desktop. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.