[ibook_steve]

While I'm waiting for Parallels to get back to me (tick tock, Parallels; it's almost 24 hours since I submitted my ticket), I thought someone here might be able to help me out.

I'm using the latest Parallels 5 with an XP SP3 VM using my Boot Camp volume. I've always used bridged networking to give XP its own unique IP address and I've never had any problems. Yesterday, I got up and started working in the VM and noticed I had no Internet connection. Opening the Realtek ethernet adapter and going to the Support tab, I noticed that everything was empty. Fine, I'll just click Repair. No dice. Windows gives me an error saying there was a failure to query TCP/IP settings of the connection. Issuing "ipconfig /all" gives me nothing, not even a MAC address for the card. It's like it's there, but it's not.

Troubleshooting I've already tried: Reinstall Parallels tools (multiple times), manually remove and reinstall Parallels tools from Add/Remove Programs control panel, manually add and remove network adapter "card" from the VM's configuration editor, manually uninstall the adapter from Window's Device Manager (freezes Device Manager; have to force quit), tried a different VM, tried a different MAC address, booted into Windows with Boot Camp to verify that everything still works OK hardware-wise from Windows.

All this has lead nowhere. I have no network connection to my VM. And since there is no MAC address, licensed software I use that relies on the MAC address being there is now considered unlicensed.

Help! Any ideas appreciated.

Steve

[Cold Warrior]

Try rebuilding the network stack.

Tech Tip: Rebuild the TCP/IP stack

[ibook_steve]

Hmm. This seems a little scary. Since the network stack works fine when I'm booted into Windows with Boot Camp, do you still think it's OK to try this? Anything having to do with the Registry scares the crap out of me.

Steve

[Cold Warrior]

I've done it once before and it didn't hurt anything. However you could always clone your BC Windows using WinClone and restore right back if it got hosed.

Another idea is to recreate the Parallels BC-based VM. Not sure if it's possible to remove it from Parallels, dump some caches or prefs, then re-add. I can do it in Fusion.

[ibook_steve]

Well here's an example of ridiculous tech support: I decided to ask them about following the procedure you mentioned, and they specifically said not to do it. But then I waited two days and got two useless responses before I got them to bump up the severity on the ticket.

The first response from 2nd level support was to reset TCP/IP, just as you pointed me to! Argh! And it worked. Anyway, here's the full solutions sent to me by Parallels support:

Open Command Prompt in Windows (Start > Run.. > type 'cmd' > OK)

And enter following command:

netsh winsock reset

Restart Windows and use next command:

netsh int ip reset reset.log

Restart Windows once again.

This did the trick.

Steve