There are many cadets, and some faculty, who are somehow getting their winsock damaged on their PC. This is when they get the 169 address and cannot get an IP from DHCP. It is an easy registry fix.

Two folders have been placed in \\panda\shareware\all-win named "winsock fix for 2k", which is for windows 2000 and "winsock fix for XP", which is for XP. Each folder contains two registry files named winsock and winsock2.

Go to Start | Run \\panda\shareware\all-win named and access the folder for their specific operating system. Copy this to a disk for the individual since they are unable to access the network.

Once the individual has a copy of the needed file, they just double click the registry files (both winsock and winsock2) and answer yes to the question (for each file). The machine should pick up an IP immediately, but the user may have to release and renew or reboot. The machine should pick up the assigned address after both files are loaded.

It is not known why this is happening to the winsock. If anyone has any ideas as to why, it would be helpful in at least finding a way to prevent this in the future. We could then pass the info onto our users.

2004-Apr-02 9:39am nancy@nmmi.edu