Fixing the “pinging °ÿ with 32 bytes of data” error in Windows XP

Fixing the “pinging °ÿ with 32 bytes of data” error in Windows XP
Name: Fixing the “pinging °ÿ with 32 bytes of data” error in Windows XP
Submitted: 17 Mar 2010
Submitter: nickpar
Category: Windows Tutorials
Views: 370
Rating: 0
Description: ...


Directions

Just had this problem come up and took a while to google it out.
A Windows XP machine can sometimes have its WINSOCK catalog become corrupted and it appears like a network connection is disabled. Well, this is not always the case. If you perform a

PING -a -n 1 127.0.0.1

Ping the loopback connection at the COMMAND prompt you will see this as the hostname reply:

pinging °ÿ with 32 bytes of data

That °ÿ is the telltale sign that the WINSOCK catalog is corrupted. Simply enter this command at a command prompt:

CODE
netsh winsock reset catalog


and reboot the machine. The problem will be cleared up.