For my sins, I maintain a lot of computers operated by a lot of children, both in and out of school. The result? A whole mess of online game software gets installed that messes with the PC in the living room (or classroom). Sometimes it's deliberate malware, sometimes it's just terrible coding, but the result's the same: Kids' computers get hosed more frequently than most.

Here's my latest mess, and how I fixed it.

"The internet isn't working" said young Gen.

"Is that Blockland you're playing? That's an Internet game." said I

"But my Web isn't working." she replied,

And it wasn't. For the non-kids in the audience: I could ping Google.com (Start, Run, CMD, enter the words "ping google.com" without the quotes, and press Enter), but I couldn't raise google.com on Internet Explorer, Mozilla, or Chrome.

I ran through the usual troubleshooting regime: I repaired the wireless connection. No dice. I disabled the wireless connection and completely uninstalled it (Right click on My Computer, select Properties, Hardware, Device Manager, and right-clicked the Networking sections' Wireless option, and selected Uninstall.) I restarted the computer, the wireless connection reinstalled itself. Still no dice.

Then I turned to the dweeb squad on the Internet, and got my response: "Fix the TCP/IP stack."

So I went back to 11-year-old Gen and told her "Fix the TCP/IP stack."

So she did this:

1. Open a command prompt (Start, Run, CMD, OK).

2. Reset the WINSOCK defaults by entering this (followed by pressing the Enter key): netsh winsock reset catalog

3. Reset the TCP/IP stack defaults by entering this (followed by pressing the Enter key). netsh int ip reset reset.log

4. Reboot the PC.

...and presto! The Internet wasn't not working anymore.

 Tell your 11 year old to read this blog next time he or she says "The Internet isn't working." It'll serve the little tyke right.