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My sister-in-law has a Dell Inspiron 545MT with Windows Vista Home Premium installed on it. Since this morning, they have the following problem:

  1. Booting in Normal Mode with the network cable plugged in: Windows hangs completely after logging in. The desktop (and sometimes a few startup applications) get loaded, but then everthing hangs and I have to do a hard reset.
  2. Booting in Normal mode without the network cable plugged in: no problem, but, as soon as I plug in the network cable the computer immediately freezes!
  3. Booting in Safe Mode: never a problem. Doesn't matter if the network cable is plugged in or not.

What could be the problem here? I have already tried the following:

  1. Run Spybot Search & Destroy and Hitman Pro
  2. Try turning off a lot of the services set to "Automatic"
  3. Reinstall network and motherboard chipset drivers
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up vote 2 down vote

I do have the same problem. I reinstalled my computers some days ago (Vista). I installed my software and the Windows update service downloaded the updates. The notebook worked for some days without any issues. Then I was copying files to my usb stick. As it took some time I decided to let this run over night. At the morning a saw that Vista didn't respond.

When starting Vista in normal-mode. Everything runs perfect. As soon as I plug in the LAN-cable or activate WLAN it takes 10 sec. and the system stops. I started Wireshark (Network protocol analyser) to see what happens. The network cards sends some packages and the the system stops.

I assume that this isn't a driver problem because a) everything ran perfect before (without changing a driver file) b) in safe-mode it is possible to connect the LAN-cable or enable wireless LAN.

I suspect a windows update for this, but I don't have a evidence.

System: Dell Inspiron 1520 OS: Vista Home Premium SP2 VS: MS Security Essentials

I got the latest network drivers from Dell. I removed the network drivers and let Vista install them (before the system hung for the first time).

I tried to reset WINSOCK. It did't help.

http://forums.techguy.org/windows-vista/749345-solved-vista-hangs-network-access.html

Greetings from Germany Alex

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Hi Alex. I have formatted my sister-in-law's computer and reïnstalled Windows Vista. The problem is solved now and I hope it stays that way. Unfortunately, doing a fresh install of Windows actually took less time than all the searching and trying to solve it in another way. Still don't know what caused the problem though. – Kristof Claes Sep 27 '10 at 9:19
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