[RussellWild]

Please help!

Something has gone wrong with the networking setup in my Windows 2000
installation. Whenever I try to use applications that in some way have to
use networking or dial-up services, I get various errors and other problems
(even opening LAN properties causes Explorer to crash).

An example is Microsoft ActiveSync 3.1 which I use with my PocketPC. When I
first boot the system and go into My Computer -> Mobile Device it throws me
back out saying "Critical communications services have failed to start". If
I then go into Network & Dial-Up Connections and enable my network card
(Netgear FA310TX), this causes a little icon to appear in the taskbar saying
"Network Cable Unplugged". After that, I can get into Mobile Device fine and
other apps seem to work OK again.

But on rebooting it all goes back to square one. To me it sounds like some
service or other which _used_ to start automatically is no longer doing so.
The question is - which one and why?

I hope someone here can shed some light on this. It is starting to get VERY
annoying, but I can't reinstall Win2K at the moment.

Thanks in advance,
Russell

[clutch]

Any info in your System and Application event logs?

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Regards,

clutch