IE7 diagnostics informed me that it “detected a problem with the Winsock provider catalog” and it gives me a link to click on and restart to fix the problem but it doesn’t make any difference. I looked at Microsoft’s page on “how to determine and recover from Winsock2 corruption” but couldn’t run the “guided help” function, which replied that “the server name or address could not be resolved.” However I did try some of the manual suggestions and when I ran Msinfo32 and looked in “Protocol” all 10 components and only those were present, which at least for that test showed that Winsock2 was not corrupt.
However I read somewhere to run “ping” tests, which I did and were largely unsuccessful. I can successfully ping 127.0.0.1 which I understand is a loop to my own computer. However when I try to ping the ip address or the default gateway given when I type in “ipconfig /all”, I get a message “ping: transmit failed, error code 64” and that 4 packets were sent, none received. If I try to ping www.google.com or any web address, I get the message “ping request could not find host www.google.com. Please check the name and try again.” I also ran “diagnose network configuration and run automated networking tests” in "windows help and support” and this likewise indicated multiple failed ping tests specifically in “mail and news” and “network adapters.”
I also turned off Windows Firewall and am not running any other software firewalls (not entirely sure if my router may have one built in or if that could be an issue).
I have very limited computer knowledge and most everything I tried above was by following others’ step-by-step suggestions to similar problems, so please bear this in mind when responding – I’m grateful for any suggestions!