jeffharbert.com

Every once in a while the TCP/IP stack in Windows XP will break. The most obvious way to tell is to open a command prompt and run ipconfig. If it comes back with “Windows IP Configuration” and nothing else, TCP/IP is broken. If it was working, you’d at least see that the IP was 0.0.0.0. One oddity I’ve run across is that TCP/IP will function normally in Safe Mode but not in Normal Mode. YMMV, obviously.

Some will tell you that you have to reinstall XP if TCP/IP breaks. This is not necessarily the case. You can repair TCP/IP with one simple command. Open a command prompt and run this command:

netsh int ip reset c:\resetlog.txt

This resets TCP/IP to the state it was in when XP was first installed. Run this command, reboot, and you should be golden.

Note: After you run this command, some apps that rely on networking might need to be reinstalled. When I used this command to repair TCP/IP on one of our company laptops, the VPN client on the laptop didn’t work anymore. I had to remove and reinstall it. Again, YMMV.

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 21st, 2007 at 7:15 am and is filed under How I do IT. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will be moderated but will appear as soon as humanly possible.