Another PING Problem 2

[slicksurf]

Hi, I have a bizzare problem which I have never seen before.
I cannot ping any machine after roughly 24hr after a full reboot. No schedules programs run every 24hrs. Not that I know of. Startup programs and services has been checked out and only programs that should be there are there. When the fault exhibits itself, if there is any network activity the machine seems to have for a second every 10 or seconds. Spybot shows no erronuous programs, AVG shows system is clean.
Unsure when this has begun, but I can do a loopback ping which shows the network card is running and 192.168.2.11 is still assigned. No other machine can see it, and the only way to re-establish the link is to reboot the machine. The only programs on the machine are uTorrent, Active Webcam (CCTV), Spybot, AVG Antivirus and Zonealarm Pro 6.5.722. OS is WinXP SP2. XP firewall is disabled.
Any Ideas before I re-install the damned thing?

 

[KiscoKid]

IP address conflict or faulty NIC/cable/switchport perhaps? When it next happens, go onto a machine that sits on the same IP subnet and ping the machine's allocated IP address. Then check the ARP cache on that machine to see what MAC address it is resolving too.

If you see an resolved MAC address, confirm this is the same MAC address as the problem PC.

If you are not getting a MAC address, I'd try a different NIC/cable and switchport for the problem PC and retest.

Hope this helps

 

[slicksurf]

Hmm.. ARP Cache, didn't know about that. Will check when it happens next, its already happened today and I've rebooted, so will check tomorrow. Many thanks for the idea.

For those who want to know how to view\flush the ARP Cache, a quick google search yeilds:-
At the command prompt type "arp -a" to view the ARP Cache.
To flush the cache type at the command prompt "netsh interface ip delete arpcache"

 

[fartingfrog]

Yo---does it fail if you put in a static address???

 

[slicksurf]

Woops, forgot to update this. I checked the ARP Cache, everything ties up.
I then ran the System File Checker "sfc.exe /scannow" and lo and behold a raft of files needed corrected. One reboot later and its all up and running. And its now been a few days and all is well. The only downside to this is that the cause was never found. Until next time...

Many thanks for you help.