Unable to initialize windows sockets interface, error code 10107

I was called the other day to have a look at a computer that couldn’t go online. I thought “probably something small”. Yeah! RIGHT! On Vista? HA! So I go there. I have a look. User log on was taking minutes, welcome screen more. No IP address. No DNS server. What the hell? I had never seen something like this.

Kaspersky wasn’t working. It was complaining that some components couldn’t run. “Ok”, I thought, “let’s disable some Vista settings not needed. Maybe that will live things up a bit because the computer is ‘flowing’ like honey on sand; not at all!”.

I open up Services and disable the worst ‘evil doer of delays’ the Windows Indexing. As I was moving up and down on the list of services, trying to figure what else I can kill, I saw DHCP service stuck on ‘Starting’. “Wait a second”, I said to myself (yes I talk to me. We have the greatest conversations this way. Full of zest and intelligence. Anyyywayyyys), “that’s not right. Why is this taking so long to start? Isn’t DHCP a service that assigns an IP address from the server? Maybe that’s the reason why. Ok let’s hit Google for answers”.

Unfortunately there was NONE to be found for Vista. It was like Micro$oft didn’t want to give MORE evidence of their crap OS. I was getting angry and frustrated. I had the user asking me every 5 seconds if I can fix it? Why the damn thing is not working? I tried ipconfig /all. Media disconnected. Ipconfig /renew. Media disconnected. Nothing. I was getting even more angry in the point to just format the damn thing and put Linux in it.

All my tries with the Windows repair suggestions were getting to the same result. Nothing. But as M$ is putting it: “It seems that there is still an error with your connection. Please contact your System Administrator”. In other words “Piss off and leave us alone. Find your solution yourselves.”

But I would not get defeated. I will get to the bottom of this. As I was searching the internet, I stumble across in an article about repairing the winsock. I found some helpful commands that I run straight away:

Sfc /scannow

The command found some errors and repaired them. But at the end the connection wasn’t up still. So I tried the next command:

Netsh winsock reset

After a short run the TCPIP stack was repaired and I could see a connection again. I was overjoyed. My user was happy too. I can’t understand why M$ couldn’t add that simple command into their Automatic repairing crap that they have??? I will never find out (NOR I CARE!)

I would like to thank all those people that contributed to the technical forums that helped me fix this error and moved my knowledge, on the mystic arts of fixing Vista problems, on step further. I bow to you. Thank you.