Handy Tip – No Dataflow and Pings Respond with “oy”

Bit of a strange one today (perhaps a bit dry) but I was out fixing a problem with a computer at For Dogs’ Sake this evening fixing a computer that had been infected with some malware. The computer had no dataflow through a web browser (which would promptly crash) but ping tests would work albeit with a very strange outcome.

C:\>ping 139.134.5.51

Pinging oy with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 139.134.5.51: bytes=32 time=23ms TTL=46
Reply from 139.134.5.51: bytes=32 time=68ms TTL=46
Reply from 139.134.5.51: bytes=32 time=54ms TTL=46
Reply from139.134.5.51 : bytes=32 time=56ms TTL=46

Add to that, the system speaker would beep after executing the ping command. I have never ever seen this before.

Now, some other computer dude (who has been keeping an old computer hostage with all of the business’s email and POS software) wanted to reinstall Windows XP to fix this problem. He also wanted to take the computer away to fix it (an I emphatically discouraged the business owner from allowing that to happen). As usual, Google had the answer.

From a command line, all that needed to be done was type the following:

netsh winsock reset

… followed by a reboot – all fixed.

This might be a fairly obscure thing but for someone out on the interwebs, this might come in handy.