Converging on Microsoft

Mitchell Ashley

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Vista with AIM 6.5 plagues users

By Mitchell Ashley on Wed, 11/14/07 - 11:41pm.

I began the day with a Vista laptop that wouldn't connect to my LAN or the Internet. What was odd is the network icon in the system tray wouldn't respond when I attempted to check the network status. And the Windows Security Center reported my firewall wasn't on, and I had no anti-virus software. A further check showed the firewall was off, but anti-virus was working. Something was seriously wrong.

My first inclination was to ask myself what changed. Well, last night I did download and install the new VMware Server 2. And it was Microsoft Tuesday yesterday and two patches would have been applied over night. So I uninstalled VMware Server, but no change.

A quick check to the Windows system logs showed that the Network List Service was failing to start, and manually restarting it got the same failed result. The log message was "The Network List Service terminated with an error: Insufficient system resources exist to complete the requested services". Interestingly though, I could tether my Windows Mobile 6 phone and connect to the Internet via EVDO, so some networking stuff was working. I at least had enough to get online and start digging around.

Turns out, I'm not the only one. Microsoft TechNet has a thread full of users and IT support people reporting the same symptoms, beginning October 26, and they were getting mighty testy that Microsoft hadn't even been able to reproduce the problem or find the cause. Some users were even thinking the problem might be related to a thread going back as far as February but I didn't chase that lead. One other common report though, many users reported installing or using AIM 6.5. Some thought installing AIM 6.5 with Vista's User Account Control turned off might be part of the scenario.

Two of the three remedies suggested by users weren't palpable to me; reinstall Vista, or add "NT Authority/Local Service" to the Administrators group permissions (a big security risk). Fortunately for me, the third option of uninstalling AIM worked. The network is back, wireless is working, and Network List Service starts fine. Security Center still thinks there's no anti-virus software running but it's fine. Others on the list weren't so lucky and are still struggling to find a solution. The version of AIM I was running was AIM 6.5.5.2, btw.

If you run into the same problem, try the above and/or check the forum link above in case more progress has been made. Hopefully this blog post has been downloaded to your blog reader beforehand, making this easier to diagnose without a network connection.