You’re a bad TCP stack, bad!

It was back to my parents house for a little holiday cheer and, as time allowed, a little family tech support. I enjoy helping out my folks and two other sets of in-laws with their computer troubles. It helps me feel useful when comparing ‘handy skills’ with my Journeyman plumber brother.

The Symptom

The PC wouldn’t grab an IP via DHCP. If assigned a static IP all was good, but ipconfig /renew from the command prompt reported back “an error has occurred while renewing interface Local Area Connection. The RPC server is unavailable”

The Solution

The NIC is fine, but the network stack has become corrupt. OK, fine. However, refreshing the TCP stack in WindowXP isn’t as easy as it was with XPs older brothers.

Here is the fix I use:

1. Click Start, and then click Run.
2. In the Open box, type regedit, and then click OK.
3. In Registry Editor, select File, Export and then save a copy of the registry to the desktop.
4. In Registry Editor, expand HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services.
5. Right-click Winsock, and then click Delete. When you are prompted to confirm the deletion, click Yes.
6. Right-click Winsock2, and then click Delete. When you are prompted to confirm the deletion, click Yes.
7. Click Start, then Control Panel, and then Network & Internet Connections (or Network Connections).
8. Right-click on your Local Area Connection (the offending NIC), and then click Properties.
9. In the Local Area Connection Properties click Install.
10. In the Select Network Component Type click Protocol, and then Add.
11. You will now see a list of available protocols, click Have Disk…
12. Enter the following path, c:\windows\inf or c:\winnt\inf, and then click OK
13. Selecting “Windows” on the left, you will see an expanded list of available protocols on the right. Select Internet Protocol (TCP/IP), and then click OK
14. Reboot

Boom! Back in business!

You can now delete the registry backup you saved on your Desktop.