PLZ HELP !! IP addresses work ... but actual web addresses don't !! PLZ HELP

[Mike160]

Heres the skinny... my mother in laws PC refuses to resolve web sites ....
I can type the IP address of web sites and that works fine...
NO viruses or spyware, fresh install of XP (about a week old)

If I goto the diagnostics of the dsl modem and check connections everything comes back fine...
dsl, PPPoE, DNS ... and if I send a ping request from within the firmware of the dsl modem it works good, but like i said previously if I use ping from the cmd line it doesn't work; unless i ping the IP address directly

I'm sorry if i'm not comunicating my problem well enough but if anyone has any ideas i would apreciate it

*note: the dsl modem has routing capabilities built in, also i would expect a problem with IE but the ping command doen't work either...

I've reset the dsl modem, created a new windows user account but nothing seems to work...

Thank you for your time...

 

[jpmkm]

Are you using static addressing or are you letting the PC receive IP information via DHCP? Check to see if you have DNS server addresses configured on the pc; if they are configured, then make sure they are correct for her ISP. If there are no DNS servers configured, then try putting in her DNS servers' addresses. I'm not sure what the root problem is, but that should at least allow her to resolve domain names.

 

[Mike160]

Thanks for the quick reply ... yes the modem is using DHCP... and yes the DNS servers are configured correctly...

My next step is to do an "nslookup" from the command line and see if i can resole some web sites... if that works (which i think it will based on all other info) I will try and boot from a Knoppix CD and see if it works that way .. that will at least let me rule out weather or not i'll be expecting a windows re-install.... i'm stumped...

any other ideas would be of help..
I've gotta wait till I can get back to her house and have the pc in front of me to tinker around some more.

 

[The_Mage18]

This sounds all too familiar. $5 says nslookup fails. I've seen this happen on 2K and XP though not as common on XP.

Can you do an ipconfig /release or /renew without geting any errors? If not, Winsock is hosed.
The easiest way to fix it requires a second, working XP computer (doesn't matter if it's Home/Pro).

On the workign machine, run regedit and go to HKEY_LOCALMACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services and export the folders for Winsock and Winsock2.

On the broken machine, delete those above folders. Then right-click each file you created from the first machine and select Merge (might be Import, don't remeber exactly) to add them back in. Once both are imported, reboot and your problem should be solved.