Tech Journal Back to Tech Journal

Manually fixing the TCP stack on Windows

The way I had to fix the TCP system on my computer:
(caused due to some driver/dll supplied by some spyware or NortonAntiVirus that was monitoring/filtering all TCP/IP traffic)

Symptoms:

1. netsh emits an error code (10107) regarding the startup of IPMONTR.DLL
2. "ipconfig /renew" refused to work
3. DHCP refuses to load
4. the CTRL-ALT-DELETE before logon has an hourglass cursor that doesn't allow logon for around 2-3 minutes. (Have patience.)

Solution:

1. uninstall all the services for the network card
2. look for the keys: HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Winsock
   HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Winsock2
   HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\DHCP
   HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\TCPIP
   they may have some dependencies with another service that no longer is installed. (like a Norton Anti-Virus service, or some adware/spyware program that you removed.) You can try removing those dependencies, and restarting the services. That didn't work for me.
   I ended up saving (via Export) those keys, and then deleting them.
3. Reboot. Hopefully your system will have recovered by now. Otherwise, continue to step 4.
4. Do a full repair (via the Windows Setup CD) on your OS, or reinstall the latest Service Pack.

Note: if you're running XP, you might try "netsh interface ip reset". This does a full reset of the driver stack. Never tried it, myself.

Back to Tech Journal