Reader Question: My Vista Networking Stopped!

Another question from a reader:
"Techie,
After removing a minor malware infection from my laptop running Windows Vista Ultimate, my laptop no longer see's any network connections (wired or wireless).  I have tried to reset the network configuration by reset the TCP/IP stack, and that didn't help either.  What has happened?

Painfully Offline"

Dear Painfully Offline,
First, you may want to run the SFC (System File Checker) to make sure there aren't any file corruption issues going on.  In the case I bumped into the SFC scan came back clean.  Here's how to do that:

1-Click the Start orb.
2-In the search box type: CMD and hit Enter.
3-At the command prompt type: sfc /scannow
4-Let it run, it will report any issues found/repaired.

I have seen this once before on a Vista based machine.  What had happened in that situation (and every malware/virus situation can be unique); is that the Services permissions somehow got screwed up.  What I ended up doing was venturing into the Services in the Microsoft Management Console.  Here is how to access that:
1-Click the Start Orb on the task bar.
2-In the text box (where you can search or do "Run" commands) type: Services
3- You should see a "Services" listing appear towards the top of the menu listing.
4-I had to run it as Administrator to get this to work, so right click on Services and choose "Run As Administrator".

Now the Services console will pop up.  BE VERY CAREFUL USING THIS TOOL.  It's easy to screw up other permissions while messing around in here.  The first thing I did was scroll through the list of services until I found the easiest way to start was look for the Networking based services.  I started with WLAN Autoconfig service and click the Dependencies tab.

What you need to do is go through the dependencies for these Services and make sure they are started.  In most of my cases, all of these networking services should have been started and set to automatically startup.  However, most were disabled.  After stepping through these services and checking them (which was a tedious task), both my wired and wireless networking came back to life.  Sure, this took a little while to work through, but it saved the time from doing a Operating System Restore and kept me from loosing any valuable customer data.

Given the fact that there was a malware infection in my case as well; I ran numerous virus/malware scans and ran MalwareBytes scans repeatedly until all came back clean.  Though I can't say for sure what happened in the case of our reader, in my situation the malware messed with Symantec Endpoint Protection.  Which would throw a "Symantec Endpoint Protection is malfunctioning" error.  After removing the Symantec application with Clean Wipe (available from Symantec), the problems seemed to clear up.

Hopefully, this information is able to help you (Painfully Offline), and to other's who may be in dire straits over a similar Vista issue.  Remember, every function your Windows Operating System utilizes has a service attached to it.  If it doesn't register or suddenly stops working, there is a good chance you need to look at whether or not the service is started or disabled.  Not to say this will fix it every time, but it has been my experience that some troubles can be permission based.

Happy Troubleshooting!