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Friday, July 26, 2013

This Is More For Me Than You

I got this laptop today with a really weird problem.  No matter what wireless network it connected to it would always get a 169 address.  Usually when a computer gets a 169 address it means it's having trouble communicating with the network's DHCP service (that stands for Dynamic Host Control Protocol).  I tried all the usual tricks.  First checking for malware.  Then releasing and renewing the IP address.  Then uninstalling the wireless network driver and letting it reinstall.  Then assigning a static address.  That last step is where it got weird and lead me to the answer I was looking for.  You see even with all those tricks I tried assigning a static address is supposed to at least grant me Internet access regardless of the "outside influences".

Finally I stumbled on to a solution for the problem and it was this.  I needed to open up an elevated CMD shell and enter the following:

netsh winsock reset catalog

Winsock (an abbreviation for Windows Sockets API) controls how Windows network software should access network services.  In short, it was broken so I reset it.  Good to know if it happens again in the future.

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