Windows ipconfig does not show anything

January 7th, 2009

I had a Windows XP system (service pack 2) that would only return “Windows IP configuration” and then nothing, no indication of network disconnection nothing, well, there’s a good fix for it.

The system wouldn’t pickup an IP address from DHCP, it was like it was just confused.

You can do the following at a CMD prompt to reset the network configurations:

1
2

C:\> netsh winsock reset catalog
C:\> netsh int ip reset reset.log

The first line resets all the WINSOCK entries to their defaults, the second line resets all the TCP/IP entries to their defaults.

The first one will ask you to reboot, don’t. Do both commands and then reboot your system.

Once I did this, the computer got it’s DHCP address again quite happily.

blogLater

Mikel

Posted by mikel Filed in

13 Responses to “Windows ipconfig does not show anything”

  1. Ben Says:
    January 21st, 2009 at 05:52 AM

    This worked perfectly! Thanks for the solution.

  2. rberke Says:
    January 26th, 2009 at 03:28 AM

    I could only get to the internet in safe mode with networking. Even running msconfig and disabling all non microsoft services didn’t work. I spent 4 hours on the problem with no luck. 3 minutes after finding your website the problem was solved. Thanks, thanks and more thanks

  3. Martin Says:
    February 3rd, 2009 at 10:20 AM

    Thanks a lot!

    After many many attepts to solve this problem and reading many forums, this is the only one working solution!

    thanks again

  4. rberke Says:
    February 7th, 2009 at 07:56 PM

    I have discovered that a reboot is not always required.

    I suggest adding a 3rd command like: netsh winsock reset catalog netsh int ip reset reset.log ipconfig /renew

    Also, future researchers might those 3 commands useful in resolving these related error messages on an XP Pro service pack 3 machine: “connection failed” and “there was a problem connecting to the TPM (security device) on this computer” I also suspect the problem might originate from Trend Worry Free anti virus, but I have not pinned it down.

  5. Rayne Says:
    March 13th, 2009 at 08:20 PM

    only two words… thank you.

  6. Rolly Says:
    June 5th, 2009 at 01:01 PM

    awesome man.. this actually solved my problem. thanks man!

  7. Mike Hamilton Says:
    June 9th, 2009 at 10:34 AM

    I had tried just aboiut everything and was ready to give up. Then I found your resolutiuon. Thanks I haven’t run it yet because I’m at work but as soon as I get home I’ll run it.

  8. RS Says:
    July 18th, 2009 at 03:10 PM

    Wow! This worked like a charm! I changed the keyboard on my dell laptop and I was afraid I fried the network adapter in the process. But, the steps outlined here had me up and running in a couple minutes. Thanks so much!!!

  9. Aaron Says:
    August 28th, 2009 at 10:22 AM

    Really pleased that this worked for me! These simple steps helped get me back online. Thanks!

  10. Micheal Says:
    September 8th, 2009 at 06:15 PM

    Thanks for the tip, worked like a charm.

  11. Warren Stark Says:
    October 2nd, 2009 at 01:24 PM

    That was great. Thanks for the fix.

  12. Khim Says:
    October 16th, 2009 at 02:26 PM

    Thank you very much!!!!!!!! Tried everything the whole day and you solve this in 10 Minutes!!!!!!

    You save the world!!!

  13. John H Says:
    October 18th, 2009 at 06:13 PM

    Thanks. After10 minutes of panic I did a search and found this solution and problem resolved in 5 min. This happened after apply Oct. round of windows patches.

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