How do I delete a Network and/or Workgroup?

[Scarlett]

While staying at my son's house, I attempted to add my laptop to his wireless network. I never managed to connect to the Internet through his network. When I brought my laptop home and reconnected it to my wired LAN, I discovered that my original workgroup name had been replaced with my son's workgroup name, and my laptop now sees only itself in that workgroup!

Oddly enough, I still am able to print from a network printer that is installed on another computer in my original LAN, but I can't see any of the computers in that LAN's workgroup! My laptop is suffering from extreme latency, both in typing, i.e., characters do not appear on the screen immediately, and in accessing and loading pages on the Internet.

I don't know if this behavior is related to the workgroup issue, but I would like to be able to delete the network and/or workgroup that I added at my son's house and reinstall my laptop on the proper network and in the correct workgroup. Just haven't been able to figure out how to do this. I am running Win2K Pro on the laptop. Can someone please help?

Many thanks!

Scarlett

[Erik]

The slowness of the computer in general has nothing at all to do with the network issue.

Good news is that is is very simple to change the workgroup back to whatever one it was on before. Just right click on My Computer, choose Properties from the drop down menu, and click on the Computer Name tab. From there just click the change button, and enter whatever workgroup name is needed. You will need to restart the PC.

As for being alow in general, do you have updated AV installed? A firewall? Have you run any type of spyware scans such as Spybot Search and Destroy?

[Scarlett]

The slowness of the computer in general has nothing at all to do with the network issue.

Good news is that is is very simple to change the workgroup back to whatever one it was on before. Just right click on My Computer, choose Properties from the drop down menu, and click on the Computer Name tab. From there just click the change button, and enter whatever workgroup name is needed. You will need to restart the PC.

As for being alow in general, do you have updated AV installed? A firewall? Have you run any type of spyware scans such as Spybot Search and Destroy?

Erik, thanks so much for the quick response! Your suggestion fixed my problem immediately! My laptop can now see all of the other computers in my LAN and Workgroup. And, believe it or not, it appears to have cured the latency problems I have been experiencing. I can't believe the improvement! I had decided that my computer was having to search for the workgroup it was "supposed" to be in, and not being able to "find" it was the reason it was running so slowly. If you think that simply restarting the PC might have cured the problem, I really don't think so--you have no idea how many times I have restarted this computer in an attempt to "fix" it.

In answer to your questions: (1) Yes, I have Norton Systemworks with NAV and worm protection and email scanning running in automatic-update mode. I run a full system scan every morning at 4:00 a.m. (2) I have Kerio Personal Firewall installed and running, as well as running my LAN behind a router. (3) I have run Spybot S&D which reported a clean system. I have run AdAware which found no threats. I have run HijackThis and posted the log for Budfred and others to analyse, and have deleted the entries they suggested. All of this information is in another thread in the Security forum. As I also mentioned there, I downloaded and installed the MS Critical Updates. In a last-ditch and desperate attempt to resolve my latency problems, I was on the verge of removing all of those updates--which would, of course, have reopened the security holes they are purported to plug! Now I may not have to take that drastic measure.

Since restoring this computer to my LAN and workgroup, it is once again running at the speed I would expect with my broadband connection, and the keystroke latency has disappeared! Regardless of whether restoration to the LAN and Workgroup is the reason for the improvement, I am so very grateful.

Many, many thanks!

Scarlett

[mjc]

Well...then I'll quit looking to see if one of the CritUps was the cause of your slowdown...

[Erik]

Wierd no reason I can think of would cause keystroke latency due to network problems. Internet slowness, or other network slowdowns maybe, but not keystrokes. Not really all that suprising though, weird is the norm when it is Windows and PCs a lot of times.

Anyway glad you got everything resolved and are up and running well.

[Scarlett]

Well...then I'll quit looking to see if one of the CritUps was the cause of your slowdown...

Well, I'm still not sure but that one or more of them might have something to do with the slowdown. My husband found an article that said many companies were experiencing problems of this nature, believed to be associated with the updates. I still will entertain the removal of one or more of them if there is a known problem. However, at this moment, my system is running at an acceptable speed, so I guess I will leave it alone for the present time.

I am on my way to the other thread to let everyone there know that the urgency has passed.

Thanks for the help!

Scarlett

[classicsoftware]

The reason for the slow up is the network card is sending packets out to see if it can connect to anything on the workgroup...........

[Scarlett]

The reason for the slow up is the network card is sending packets out to see if it can connect to anything on the workgroup...........

So, are you saying that when it can't find my son's workgroup, it defaults to mine, and that's what causes the delay? Performance has improved dramatically since I changed the workgroup name, adding this computer to my LAN once again.

I also found the article my husband told me about. It is on foxnews.com and states in pertinent part:

Two patches released in Microsoft's April batch of security updates are causing system hangs, Windows crashes and the appearance of strange dialog boxes.

The problems stem from a non-security modification toInternet Explorer and a critical fix for a code execution hole in Windows Explorer, and affect third-party programs from Google, Siebel and Microsoft's own Windows Media Player.

On April 15, Microsoft released a knowledge base article to acknowledge "problems" in Windows Explorer or the Windows shell after the MS06-015 security update is installed.

That update, Microsoft said, includes a new binary called VERCLSID.EXE that validates shell extensions before they are instantiated by the Windows Shell or Windows Explorer.

On some consumer-facing programs running Hewlett-Packard's Share-to-Web software and Sunbelt's Kerio Personal Firewall, the new binary stops responding.

I haven't read the knowledge base article yet, but since I am running Kerio Personal Firewall, Google, and Windows Media Player, I am wondering if this update is partially responsible for the hangs and system freezes I have experienced. Even those have improved since I restored the computer to the proper workgroup, although they do still occur intermittently. Even though the update contains a non-security modification, it also appears to include a critical fix for a code execution hole, so I guess it shouldn't be removed? I wonder why the single update addressed two different problems--one that is non-security, and one that is security-critical? Doesn't make any sense to me! Oh, well, it is Microsoft, after all.

Scarlett

[classicsoftware]

I don't think the MS patch problem applies to you. When you are part of a Workgroup and your computer has attachments, like printers and such it will attempt to connect to the workgroup until it is successful. The way it does, is to keep sending traffic across the network until it connects.