Ok, I'm not sure how to explain this but here goes.
This is a long story but I know you need the blow-by-blow to assess the siuation - W2K BTW.
Yesterday morning I installed MS security updates, Zone Alarm update, and all went well.
Re-booted and everything was fine.
Went to work at noon and still no problems
Came home for lunch at 5:30 still fine.
Got home from work at 9:30 and everthing A-OK.
Wanted to show my son the web page I uploaded and at 9:40 he tells me "page can't be displayed" etc., etc.
Ran ipconfig and lo and behold my settings had changed and I no longer had a "connection-specific DNS suffix (normally sd.cox.net), my "IP address" had changed to something off the wall, and the "default gateway" had disappeared.
Did a release and got the message that the release could not happen because the DHCP settings were auto-confgiured by the ethernet adapter.
No problem - I uninstalled the ethernet card, shut down, re-booted and re-installed. No luck.
Next I uninstalled Client for MS, File and Printer sharing, TCP/IP, re-booted, re-installed, and still crap.
Checked all the settings with this PII I'm on and everything was the same but still the ipconfig settings were the same as before.
Removed the ethernet adapter and the above settings together, re-booted, and still the same results.
Ran a trojan scan, adaware, and spybot - just some minor tracking cookies in adaware that you always pick up.
Still not able to release and renew.
Said "Screw it", shut down, and went to bed.
Got up this morning, powered up, and all of a sudden I'm back on the network and internet - GREAT!!
Not great.
Started doing some web page updating and about 15 minutes into doing that I lose network connection again.
Run ipconfig and everything was as it should be.
Here's where it really goes downhill.
Did a release and it took about 3 minutes to release.
Did a renew and got the same message about 3 minutes later regarding the ethernet adapter and DHCP.
Decided to go into disk management and the hour glass comes up, disappears, and nothing happens.
Tried again in admin tools - same thing.
Tried opening Norton System Works and the same thing happens.
Nothing would open.
So I shut down and before it does I get all of these "program not responding - end task" messages.
Ran chkdsk /p in Recovery Console and it says there are one or more errors on the drive.
Ran /r and it just finished.
And the magic answer is .................................................. ..........??
I'm baffled!!
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