I have a very perplexing problem here. We have a machine here that cannot ping any addresses other than 127.0.0.1, without hanging the ping process. (Have to control alt-del and end the “oldwinapp” process. )
Obviously, we can’t get email or internet access on this machine. Interestingly enough, others can still use the printer and files on this machine from across the network. This seems to point to the network card being functional.
I have removed anything that looked like viruses ( an old infection of sobig had left some residue, and there was bymer on the machine. ) There doesn’t appear to be anything that looks like spyware left on the machine.
I even changed the NIC in hopes that it was flaky. No such luck. I tried reinstalling 98se over top of itself in hopes of rebuilding the network stack, in case that was it. Still no joy.
I am currently copying all of the files to another machine that is currently not being used, but windows won’t see the drive, unless in safe mode. There are about 4gigs of documents. This will take hours.
Scandisk doesn’t indicate any bad sectors, and the drive is quiet.
I have to know though,…. what the heck have I missed??
Well, in the end, we were able to prove that it was a software issue of some sort, by booting a KNOPPIX cd. We were able to surf the internet.
Fixing winsock didn’t work.
The “fix” was to format the drive and reinstall. As much as I hate that route, it seemed the only thing we could do.