Home Networking Problems (Specifically TCP/IP)

Factual Questions
1

Here’s the situation:

My flatmate’s computer (running Win98) has screwed up (again) with it’s network settings. Except for installing Adware, nothing has happened to it. Specifically 2 things are nackered - Internet access and playing games with the TCP/IP protocol. My guess it that they are connected somehow.

The Internet problem isn’t linked to the modem, since we tried connecting through a spare external one.

The two network devices are Windows Dial Up and the network card. I’m guessing it’s not the hardware, since Windows File Sharing works OK and Starcraft (that uses IPX protocols) runs. We’re using two 10Mb cards with a hub. And yes, cables too…

At the time we were trying to play Rise of Nations, but his computer couldn’t detect the network settings (it uses TCP/IP). Through some driver wrangling, I’ve managed to get Diablo II to detect TCP/IP but it spits out a message “Can’t find TCP/IP settings”.

I’ve uninstalled all existing network drivers (IPX, TCP/IP, and NetBeu [sp?]), then re-installed them with TCP/IP last. I’ve copied over my TCP/IP settings (except for the IP numbers), and even tried making it the default protocol. I’ve set the IP number to 192.168.1.4 with a submask of 255.255.255.0, but I’ve used this number before so that’s unlikely to be a problem too.

Since it’s just randomly cropped up and doesn’t appear to be hardware related, I’m left scratching my head. Any hints?

2

Were you running Ad-aware 6? Build 160 has a bug that screws up TCP/IP stacks. The fourth post in this thread has a fix for Win98.

3

Are both computers using 192.168.1.x IP addresses?

Try the following. At a DOS prompt, type “ping 127.0.0.1” and see what it says. This is the loopback test. If it doesn’t work then something in your network properties is set wrong. If you can get the loopback to work, try pinging each other’s address and see if you get a response.

Adaware is known to sometimes screw up your networking. I think it results from adaware killing part but not all of some sort of spyware. If you do a google search I’m sure you’ll find more details.