Repair DNS / WinSock

If your machine can connect to the internet fine, ping IP addresses, but won't connect to any sites, then I may have the answer. The first thing to check is that your internet connection is functioning. This is easy to do if you've got a router and other computers on the network, simply go to a website on another machine. If you're on dial-up or a stand-alone machine it is slightly more difficult.

The first and easiest way to see if you are talking to the outside world is to try to ping an IP address. Click Start->Run and type command into the box. Press OK. In the DOS box that pops up type ping 216.239.37.99 (Google's IP). If you get responses you know immediately that your connection is fine. If you can ping the address, this means that more than likely you can type the IP address into the address bar in your browser and Google should come up. If not, you may have browser issues as well.

Now that we've confirmed that we can talk to outside machines, and that the browser is functioning properly, lets repair the DNS settings. More than likely New.net or some other malware has dinked around with stuff in your registry and hosts files thus causing this problem.

There's a couple of ways to correct your DNS properties.

The easy way to Repair DNS / WinSock: Download WinSockFix. Run it. Reboot. Connect to the internet, and surf. This has worked for me every time. When it doesn't, it's usually been a problem with the browser itself. (Remember we're operating under the assumption that you can communicate with outside addresses. If you can't, none of this will do any good)

The hard way to repair DNS / WinSock: Here you'll manually repair all of the stuff that is broken. I've no idea why you would want to do it this way, but I'd suppose that the knowledge is useful to have. (You obviously have access to the internet now, or you wouldn't be reading this page. Just download the utility and save yourself a headache)

Windows 98/ME Manual DNS Repair

Go to your network settings. Right-click Network Neighborhood on the desktop, click Properties. Remove everything with the exception of the adapters.

Manual DNS Repair

Click OK. Don't reboot though! You've more to do.

Now open regedit and remove the following registry keys:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\VXD\Dhcp
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\VXD\Dhcpoptions
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\VXD\MSTCP
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\VXD\Winsock2
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Winsock2

Go back to the network properties and click Add->Protocol->TCP/IP. Also add Client for Microsoft Networks if it isn't added automatically. You'll likely need your Windows CD with you so it can copy various files from it.

Empty the hosts file (Windows\hosts) by opening it with notepad and deleting the entries. Save a backup beforehand. Reboot, and you should be good to go.

For Windows XP and 2000, continue on: XP/2000 Manual DNS Repair