Because of NetBT

Hey there.

I have wasted 3 hours at work because of NetBT. This issue and all of the other obscure or frustrating issues I repeatedly encounter (and forget the solutions to) prompted me to create a blog about them. It's partly for my own reference.

For starters, this problem wasn't technically because of NetBT. It's because of a lack of it, and Windows XP's inability to communicate that to me effectively. (Malware, disk corruption, or something must have eliminated the NetBT service on this machine--a very obscure problem that I had never seen before and that I struggled to find a solution to via search engines, due to the majority of people having a simpler fix.)

So, here's the scoop. With this computer, I was unable to assign an WINS server (it wouldn't stick) in the network connection configuration, and every time I changed the network configuration, a reboot was required.


When trying to repair the connection, the process stopped at "Clearing NetBT."


I couldn't do any network browsing, and couldn't join the computer to the domain (may have been related to WINS; I know, using WINS nowadays is sad, but that's beside the point).

Here's what fixed it for me:
At a command prompt:
sc create NetBT type= kernel start= system error= normal binPath= system32\DRIVERS\netbt.sys group= PNP_TDI
That re-creates the service with basic parameters, BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE!
In order to get the details exact (I'm too lazy to fully learn the sc command), you can download this registry entry, which I pulled from HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\NetBT on a machine that was functioning properly.

Final steps were disabling the network interface, running WinsockXpFix, rebooting, and re-enabling the interface.

Hooray! Problem solved.

As a side note, in order to test my instructions, I performed an sc delete and ruined everything! No matter what I did, I couldn't make it work again--the NetBT service and those that depended on it wouldn't start (Error 1058), so I System Restored and then followed my own instructions. DON'T SC DELETE STUFF.

I think WinsockXpFix runs these commands:
netsh winsock reset catalog
netsh int ip reset reset.log

Happy trails.