Vista: Networking: "LSP is outdated"?

[RTC]

I work for a small ISP, and recently we've been hit with 3 different customers telling us that when they try to browse the internet with IE on Vista Home that it won't display certain or all pages. They have Vista diagnose connection problems and it comes back telling them that their LSP (Layered Service Provider) is outdated. Evidently this also provides and option to clear or delete the offending LSP entry, and when they do that really bad things happen. :sad:

To make matters worse, when they search for an answer to their problem on the web, they usually come across a yahoo answers page entitled "What is layered service provider (LSP)" which is a closed and locked thread where the answer to this same problem is "Call the Internet company, They'll know how to fix it, it's something wrong on their end, and if they don't, switch companies." Also, add that Layered Service Provider and Internet Service Provider share two of the three words, and they make a logic jump and think I'm pulling a fast one when I tell them it sounds like an issue with winsock2 on their computer. :confused:

Now if this was XP, I would probably rip the winsock and winsock2 out of the registry and reinstall TCP/IP on the person's computer, but this is Vista and I don't even know if that can be done, how it can be done, or even if it would be relevent or help in this situation.

If anyone has ran into this before, or would have some suggestions I'd really appreciate it. Thanks. :)

[alexaner321]

First, a bit whinning: had similar problem and wasted 2 days figuring out what happend, including those "really bad things happen" and backuping vista.

Solution(using russian version, so names might be a bit different/wrong): open controll panell->equipment manager->delete network adapters(or the one u are planing to use).
In my case, it found them immidietly and found drivers at computer. dowloading new drivers might be needed. _even tho the it finds drivers at comp its required_
turn off all firewalls-antiviruses(including windwos firewall/nod32 etc)
now its supposed to connect to internet, not only to local net. also, it starts pinging normally.
still, explorer wont be working(in my case it didnt), so download firefox or something and try opening site. firefox worked for me.
also, at stage after turning off firewalls u can check if everything went fine by making "telnet google.com 80"(or another port used), dont forget to make client telnet part on in
programms and components->turning on and off windows components(left part of scren)->client telnet) before trying to type that command in cmd. (after typing that if everything is ok its supposed to be totally black cmd window, click enter several times and it will show u some internet script...if it did, problem solved).

The end

U can skip the telnet part and probably reinstalling internet explorer at the end will make it work, wont make it here couse i am way too tired of vista and will install xp...

My guesses of reasons which could cause this: nod32(maybe some other programms too) is messing araund with vista and ruins some protocols and ie.

Sorry for that bad english, but its not my first language and i am really tired...
also, i am not a programmer or something, so the explaining part is a bit hard to understand, but i think it will be even easier for other normal users...

Hope it helped. Good luck.

[XgizmoX]

RTC,

I dont know how much you deal with(id assume a lot) malware problems but typically(i say typically because thats most of what i see) LSP problems are related to malware or internet security suites. Most of the problems i see are related to "newdotnet", "mywebsearch", Norton Internet Security and Mcafee Security all not being removed correctly.

To address your question about resetting the winsock in vista...

I had the same questions you did about the winsock fix and lsp fix programs working properly, or at all on vista until i did a little research for us.

If you run a command prompt as admin and issue the command "netsh winsock" which gives a list of commands that you can use to reset, audit etc, the winsock catalog using the 'netsh winsock reset' command.

Also "netsh int ip reset" will reset all user configured settings for the tcp/ip stack. Pretty much the same thing as removing tcp/ip from the adapter and reinstalling.

As far as Vista giving you the option to remove the LSP and bad things happening its most likely related to some sort of malware. The best way i can describe this (and maybe someone can chime in to describe it better) is that the malware not only operates as a program running on the machine but at the networking layer. When the LSP gets removed the program running attempts to reference that LSP for marketing or capturing passwords or whatever that specific instance of malware does. When the program cant find the networking component 'bad things happen'.

Hope that was of some help and give me some feed back and let me know how it works for you..

[alexaner321]

Thanks for response...

Thought the story ended, but no...

It would be so funny if it haven’t been so upsetfull...

In my case, there were(are? :) ) 2 laptops, there is xp at old one and _was_ vista on new one.
they are completely same and after turning off everything(firewalls, nods etc) the vista one was not working(the problem without following windows advices and the solution is written already). after i found the solution it was decided to switch second computer to XP because vista is not stable and/or/because of(totally lost now, even tho I’ve managed to win once already ... ) some internet providers/equipment is still not updated for vista and in most hard cases you cant get proper help from professionals for vista issues, at least in Russia.

So, the xp one was working fine; Installed xp on second computer(the vista one). Everything was great for around 2 days...

Then, after turning off the old xp one at evening, at morning there was deleted video card driver(and some small issues which appeared because of it). Ok, downloaded drivers from official site(using cable internet), installed, fixed and...checked second computer wifi...xp...at which it was working after installing XP...no settings changed...and it whined(xp!) on..."guess what?"...LSP! same story as on vista.
at that moment i felt myself a total retard, started thinking about a goblin or something running around at night having fun with computers and so on, seriously. (also, before vista story several computers using same ip addresses were working fine at the same time via that wifi)
went to check the old xp one, which never had problems with lsp and no settings were changed for ages(except the weird driver thing)...turned off cable and tried to use wifi, which was working fine an hour ago, whined on...u know the answer, right?...lsp.
both on xp. both didn’t whined an hour ago. the only setting that was changed is the ip address at new xp comp so both of them can work at the same time via wifi. turning off one of them doesn’t help, so its not an ip address conflict or w/e.

Ok, decided to focus on old xp computer and turned in cable to use internet..."laughing"...package exchange going normal, he always sees local network(both comps, even with wifi)....internet...dont whine on anything, just dont work, after 10 minutes it whined on lsp, went afk for 10 minutes, came back-cabel interne is t working fine. Nothing was touched.

I am just a user with "wifi technology", know how to update progs/settings at it etc just in theory etc, so my guess was that the problem is in wifi, i e after installing vista it somehow updated it(wifi hotspot) and/or its settings and because of that the problem had sailed(lol) to the old xp computer when it tried to use internet via the wifi spot. Or it tried to update the wifi setting or whatever and because of some nod32-vista-drivers-or whatever problems it couldn’t do it normally and just ruined some setting/data in wifi spot/made some kind of firewall in wifi(is it even possible?) and it traveled to second comp ... Will call provider tomorrow and try making them come to fix it....

Or, instead of last paragraph, i can just say "I think after working with vista for 2 days i started believe in some vista evil wifi fairy".

Please, any suggestions? was too tired today to try anything and stopped after cable internet just turned on itself.
Will also try "the drivers reinstall-firefox-turning off every single firewall" vista solution algorithm on XPs, but, as far as i understood, its just a solution to ... dunno how to say, error, but not the reason which is causing this error to spread.
Any Suggestions-guesses?
Thanks...
Also, XgizmoX, can you please contact me by pm and tell your icq or email...

PS: the providers side is working fine because it always sees the local network and some local none-laptop none-wifi computers had no problems at all during the whole "vista pwning wifi" epopee

[grannyb]

I'm having the same problem, I uninstalled NORTON and installed NOD32, can you be a little more specific in how to access the windsock and steps to fixing this? I am not sure VISTA and I are going to get along, :) Thanks

grannyb

RTC,

I dont know how much you deal with(id assume a lot) malware problems but typically(i say typically because thats most of what i see) LSP problems are related to malware or internet security suites. Most of the problems i see are related to "newdotnet", "mywebsearch", Norton Internet Security and Mcafee Security all not being removed correctly.

To address your question about resetting the winsock in vista...

I had the same questions you did about the winsock fix and lsp fix programs working properly, or at all on vista until i did a little research for us.

If you run a command prompt as admin and issue the command "netsh winsock" which gives a list of commands that you can use to reset, audit etc, the winsock catalog using the 'netsh winsock reset' command.

Also "netsh int ip reset" will reset all user configured settings for the tcp/ip stack. Pretty much the same thing as removing tcp/ip from the adapter and reinstalling.

As far as Vista giving you the option to remove the LSP and bad things happening its most likely related to some sort of malware. The best way i can describe this (and maybe someone can chime in to describe it better) is that the malware not only operates as a program running on the machine but at the networking layer. When the LSP gets removed the program running attempts to reference that LSP for marketing or capturing passwords or whatever that specific instance of malware does. When the program cant find the networking component 'bad things happen'.

Hope that was of some help and give me some feed back and let me know how it works for you..

[bootsdowd]

Three years later and this post is still useful. I couldn't connect to the net wither wired or wireless. I ran HijackThis! and saw that my LSP was off and bmnet.dll was missing. Used the 'netsh winsock reset' command and the "netsh int ip reset" command and voila! Connected to the wireless router within seconds.

Thanks all.

RTC,

I dont know how much you deal with(id assume a lot) malware problems but typically(i say typically because thats most of what i see) LSP problems are related to malware or internet security suites. Most of the problems i see are related to "newdotnet", "mywebsearch", Norton Internet Security and Mcafee Security all not being removed correctly.

To address your question about resetting the winsock in vista...

I had the same questions you did about the winsock fix and lsp fix programs working properly, or at all on vista until i did a little research for us.

If you run a command prompt as admin and issue the command "netsh winsock" which gives a list of commands that you can use to reset, audit etc, the winsock catalog using the 'netsh winsock reset' command.

Also "netsh int ip reset" will reset all user configured settings for the tcp/ip stack. Pretty much the same thing as removing tcp/ip from the adapter and reinstalling.

As far as Vista giving you the option to remove the LSP and bad things happening its most likely related to some sort of malware. The best way i can describe this (and maybe someone can chime in to describe it better) is that the malware not only operates as a program running on the machine but at the networking layer. When the LSP gets removed the program running attempts to reference that LSP for marketing or capturing passwords or whatever that specific instance of malware does. When the program cant find the networking component 'bad things happen'.

Hope that was of some help and give me some feed back and let me know how it works for you..

[debspink]

I had to join this forum to say a huge thank you! I have had this problem for 4 days now and it's been driving me nuts. I've tried everything. But I can't believe the above fix has finally resolved the problem!! I used the 'netsh winsock reset' command and the "netsh int ip reset' command, rebooted twice and voila!!!! Everything seems to be back to normal. I really can't believe it was so hard. Thanks again.