Topic awaiting preservation: Help me...I'm stuck.

Now, my computer has been running fine for the past, well, god knows how long. Haven't had a problem with it apart from the occasional internal program related crash.

When I booted it up this morning I got a new screen, something I'd never seen before in XP...the blue screen of death. "Oh crap" me thinks. It was a 'stop error' ehatever that was. Windows was singularly unhelpful as to what had caused it, so I rebooted and it loaded up into windows as normal.

But my resolution and colours were screwed. Ok, reinstall display drivers, all fixed (120 x 200 resolution at 4 colours *shudder*). Now I can't seem to connect to the internet. Strange....I connect to the net over my home lan through my ADSL router. I couldn't access the router configuration from my computer, had to go do it on one of the others. My computer's entry seemed to be missing from the DNS table. Add myself back in (this happens every once in a while when the router gets a surge), no dice...restart, nope...turn the router off them on again...nope...swap the network card over..nope.

I was finally given the idea of pinging the router. So I ping its configuration IP, and I get the strangest error message. "Unable to initialise Windows Socket. Error 0". Weird. A search through microsoft's help files and the knowledge base turns up nada, so I was wondering if anyone here can tell me what I need to do in order to correct this problem (and hopefully this doesn't include reinstalling the OS, becuase I don't have the media I need to backup the latest set of data I recieved).

Please...help me?

Ok Skaarjj, off the "Top of my head"...
You didn't mention the rest of your "set up", which would be a help, (excuse with me if you've already considered these things), I would do "the usual" things of, back up needed files.
Then. as I don't really know what caused the problem (sorry) I would consider going into System Restore and reviewing my restore history, with a view to setting the system back to a more stable state.
Then I would turn to these people Pro-Networks Who, so far have dug me out of a hole, Twice! (I'm running XP too)
The reason I've hesitated to say "Put your system back to another restore point, Now" is , as we don't know what caused it, we don't really know how long it has been there. So setting your system back to a previous setting say, a week ago, my infact "reload" the fault, causing it to happen again...
I'm sorry I can't be of more help. These are just my first thoughts as I know how frustrating it is to sit there for what seems like DAYS before you get any response . If I think of anything else I'll get back to you here.



[edit] Sorry Skaarjj, I've just tested the link and realised that they request you to "register" don't they? Shoot!!!! I forgot about that... erm,,and I don't feel comfortable pretending it's my problem (as I have registered I would get a response quite quickly) But imo, I was stuck and they heped unstick me, quickly, as well! It was worth it. I not spammin heh [edit]

[This message has been edited by Taobaybee (edited 11-28-2003).]

Do you remember what that error massage was and the error code generated on that first blue screen of death? That first number, smething like this: 0000x0000x0000x0000 is the clue to finding out exactly what went wrong.



[This message has been edited by Xpirex (edited 11-28-2003).]

Unfortunatly, while my memory for numbers is good, my memory for long numbers that flash past me isn't. I can't help you there. Wish I could.



[This message has been edited by Skaarjj (edited 11-28-2003).]

Is it possible for you to reproduce the situation where that original error code was displayed? Or have you resolved the situation already? That blue screen stuff indicates that something quite critical happened. I had it once and it meant major disk failure. I called Dell and as soon as they saw the error code they sent me a brand new hard drive the very next day... even they did not want to mess with it.

Have you recently encrypted any part of your drive? As that too can cause windows to give you that blue screen warning as it can't read that part of the drive and reports it as a disk error.

No, no and no.

I don't know what aused it so I can't reproduce it. Since I don't know what caused it I haven't resolved it, althought it hasn't come up again, and I don't want to mess with it, but lacking the media to backup the remainder of what I need, it looks like I have to.

Unless someone wants to ship me a spindle of 50 blank CDs? Any takers? No?

Try looking in your HOSTS file in the Windows directory. The errors your getting sound to me like the HOSTS file has been deleted or corrupted.




-- not necessarily stoned... just beautiful.

There's also a log that's kept of recent BSOD errors...somewhere on your comp.

My log must be insanely large then

I get tons of bsod, but they are just annoying and force me to reboot. I may reformat as soon as i find my office2k cd again.

__________________________________


Alevice's Media Library

The hosts file is still there. All the IP addresses listed point to the loopback address (127.0.0.1) but it's still there. it doesn't look corrupted...all the text appears to be as it should be.

..er, I don't mean to sound like the grim reaper or prophet of doom Skaarjj, but that original blue error code will probably come back to haunt you at some point... be ready.. back everythng of value up pal.



[This message has been edited by Xpirex (edited 11-29-2003).]

Done, done and done.

I deleted everything I couldn't afford ot keep, backuped up what I had to keep into a seperatly partioned space and reinstalled windows. So I'm now backonline on my own machine and it's 4:15 AM.

I should really sleep sometime soon.