Hi, this is a fairly annoying problem so i'll just dive straight in:

A few weeks ago my laptop blue screened. When it restarted it ran checkdisk and decided a load of files had become corrupt (due to the crash). When i finally got back into windows I found that it (checkdisk) had identified just about every app I had running at the time of the BSOD as corrupt and deleted it.

I've re-installed most of it (the acer software, Office 07, wifi drivers, winamp, my firewall, opera, bluetooth drivers, skype, graphics drivers, touchpad driver...think thats abut it). but the only thing i havent been able to get working again is my connection to my LAN. i've poked around and found a few symptoms but havent found an actual proper problem with a real solution. Here is all I've found...

If I try to print from Notepad to my default printer (on the network) it says ...ok thats odd, it WAS saying something about an RFC server not being started? something like that? it now doesn't even allow me to press the print button when that printer is selected :/

My network drives all appear as disconnected

If I try to connect to my server using \\ServerName it waits for a moment (longer than it took to connect before the BSOD) and shows me a blank screen "great", i originally thought, "its just lost the shared places from the server" but it hasn't. If i attempt to go further \\ServerName\whatever it asks me for a password. Strange as the server has no password! I tried using the username and a blank password but that wasn't accepted, so I went to the server and made an admin user with a password and tried to use that. Still no luck! (that one stumped me!)

Finally, if I try to browser to the network using My Network Places I am expecting to click on Microsoft Windows Network, but when I select this it says that "The network is not present or not started". After poking around with this for a bit longer I found that when navigating direct to my server it appears under Web Client Network, but ONLY if I am navigating there. If I open a new instance of windows explorer and click on Web Client Network there is nothing contained with it.

totally stumped.

The problem exists when either wired or wireless.


My system is:
Acer Aspire 5633
4GB Ram
Core-2-Duo T7600 (2.33GHz)
nVidia 7300
Wifi - Intel Pro/Wireless 3945ABG
Wired - Broadcom 440x 10/100


I pray its something simple but i'm expecting it to be hard

I think i've given you as much info as I can but feel free to ask things or tell me to do things. At this point i'm willing to try almost anything - I didnt realise how much i use my lan and i've been having to either us e USB sticks or uploading to my web server and then downloading back down to the server or laptop.

Thanks for taking the time to read, thanks even more if you can suggest anything

I don't know if my suggestion will work, but if you have your Windows XP install cd you can use it to do a quick System Repair recovery. Also if you received a software cd from your ISP Provider, I have a Windstream CD, you may be able to use their connect tool to connect. Good Luck.

Found this for Lan Driver.

Acer Europe - Service & Support, Drivers & Utilities, Downloads, Desktop, Acer Aspire M3630/M5630

The above post was for a realtek chipset. I will google for broadcom next. This link is for intels wireless Intel Pro/Wireless 3945ABG.
Wireless - Software, drivers and technical information for Intel wireless products

Broadcom driver for XP.

Download Broadcom 440x 10/100 Integrated Controller 4.37.0.0 - Broadcom 440x 10/100 Integrated Controller

http://www.broadcom.com/support/ethernet_nic/4401.php

http://www.broadcom.com/support/ethe...aq_drivers.php

Before installing any of these drivers, go into your My Computer>Properties>Device Manager and Look for any wuestion marks next to wireless or lan hardware. If it says your hardware is installed and working properly, don't install the drivers from the links I provided. Your problem Will be in Network Configuration instead.

unfortunately i dont have an install CD as it came pre-installed on my laptop. I've re-downloaded the SP3 update but i'm going to resist re-installing that partly because i'm not confident it will work and partly because it'll mean I have to work out which of my settings will need modifying. oh thats another thing which has been broken by the BSOD, my laptop now constantly insists that security update KB957097 needs installing. once its installed it says it needs to be installed. i've tried removing it and re-installing it but that doesn't work so i'm assuming a reg value isn't being set. but i dont really mind that problem.

I was a silly boy and decided that the space my recovery partition was taking up could be better used for storing actual files so there is no chance of a recovery that way either.

I tried that wifi driver from Acer when I was re-installing all the softwrae, but it didn't fix the issue so I donwloaded the more recent ones (the ones you've linked to) direct from Intel - which also didnt help. I didn't re-install by broadcom drivers and there are no question marks but I'll check the version numbers and see if they need updating anyway.

Forgot to mention before that the internet is fine, its just the lan. I'm not sure of the importance of this but it must mean something (i.e its a LAN specific thing ive corrupted/lost).

Since my last post i've also gone into my wifi connection properties and uninstalled every Client, Service and Protocol listed. Restarted, reinstalled and restarted again but with no joy, and after a while longer on google found that the issue MAY be to do with a few of my services, both "Workstation" and "Computer Browser" are set to Automatic and will NOT start when I tell them to. I'll post the error messages if these could be important.

Drivers updated (I was a few v's out but nothing special) and no fix

How about trying a system restore to as far back as you can go?

My flat mate suggested that, but every single one I try from before the crash says it cant be restored :/