Got back to work today...2 Win98 machines have lost all networking capabilities

[NathanBWF]

So I get back from holidays to find that 2 workstations running Windows98 no longer have any sort of network capabilities. One can't even boot into normal mode, only safe mode but I'm not sure if that is a separate issue at the moment. Can' surf the web, browse the network or ping anything with host name or by IP. Anyone know if these are characteristics of this latest IE exploit and if so where can I find the steps on how to repair this.

Oh yeah, did a virus scan on the PC that could get into normal mode and it came up clean...

 

[lobadobadingdong]

have you run adaware on it? can it ping the gateway?

 

[NathanBWF]

Ran adaware, didn't find anything special. No I can't ping anything with by host name or IP...forgot to try loopback though. Anyway, since I posted this I just re-installed both machines and both are working again...but I would still really like to know what could have caused this.

 

[MrSanderzX]

If it is any consolation I had the same problem at work the end of last week. I did the same as you, just reinstalled the OS, but upgraded it to Windows 2000 since it needed to be done anyway.

 

[oldman420]

were the boxes left on over the weekend and were they behind a firewall?

 

[NathanBWF]

Originally posted by: oldman420
were the boxes left on over the weekend and were they behind a firewall?

The computers are always left on, and I'm not sure if this happend on Friday or over the weekend (I had Friday off). All computers are on the local network behind a Cisco 506E PIX firewall. Since the re-installs, both have been working fine again.