My desktop has begun the habit of being unable to obtain an ip address after reboot; it will show NO address, not even 0.0.0.0 Using the netsh commands (netsh winsock reset catalog; netsh int ip reset all) respectively to set XP Pro's winsock and ip settings to default does work, however once I reboot my machine it will once again be back to square one.



The problem originated when I had a virtual network adapter fail to uninstall properly, and I manually removed the adapter's registry entries. I have tried doing a repair install from my xp cd, reinstalling my network card drivers and the aforementioned virtual adapter, all resulting in epic fail. Any thoughts?

Wow something got majorly hosed up. Perhaps you could uninstall and re-install the network adapter drivers from the device manager by actually "deleting" the device and then doing a "check for new hardware". For testing purposes you could try installing a different NIC, such as a PCI NIC and see if the problem still exists.

Unless you don't want to format and reinstall your system.
I would suggest contacting the VPN maker and find out what registry entries to delete. to clear up your problem.
Also for your network card uninstall the drivers in safe mode and reboot and install the newest drivers that you can find for it.

Hopefully one of those will do the trick, thanks for the help.