In " Audigy kills network connection", "JustDave"
wrote:

Trouble is, it also kills my network connection. When I try ipconfig /renew, I
get the message "An operation was attempted on something that is not a socket"


Maybe Winsock got/gets corrupted somehow(?). This error is certainly mentioned
in Microsoft's Knowledge Base article 811259:

http://support.microsoft.com/default...&Product=winxp


A long shot, perhaps, but maybe it's your answer...