I logged onto my ISP this morning. No problem. But when I tried to use my browsers, it couldn’t find anything. Nothing on IE or Netscape 4.7. I called Earthlink, and they had me ping a DNS. No joy. He said that it sounds like I have a corrupted “winsoc” file and that I’ll probably have to re-install Windows. Unfortunately, my discs are 1,200 miles away!
I used Gateway Go-Back to revert my system to yesterday at 1500. Obviously, I am able to browse now.
It seems that the problem might be with Netscape. For as long as I’ve been using it (five years) every version has had “illegal operation” errors that cause me to do a hard-reboot. The problem seems to happen quite often with MS-NBC. I think that Netscape has trouble with some java applications. Total bummer.
So if I suddenly disappear, it might be that my computer has taken a dive.
I really hate to re-install Windows, since I have lots and lots of files that I don’t want to lose and I have no way of backing them up.
I know you didn’t want a GQ answer, but you’re getting one anyways
You can reinstall Windows on top of your old installation without formatting your hard drive. This may fix the problem. Depending on which version of windows you can have it blow away your old Windows directory and reinstall a fresh copy, or if you are using 98 you can boot to DOS, delete your windows directory and then reinstall.
Backing up stuff - you don’t have a CD writer in this day and age? You can pick up a cheap writer for 30 bucks on sale you know.
Also, if you’re using Win 95, 98 or ME, you can just reinstall the communications portion of Windows without effecting the rest of it. Just look in the Add/Remove Programs icon in control panel under “Windows Setup” or “Windows Components”
If you uncheck communications, restart, go back in and check it again, that will reinstall all of your winsock and tcp/ip files.
Everything seems to be working okay now. I lost my Netscape Messenger. I defragged and then rebooted. Got an illegal operation on startup (I don’t know what was loading at the time), so I restarted again. I have my Messenger back.
HideoHo: Interesting. I’ll have to remember that.
handy: I was getting a “cannot find page” message.
