Manual Steps to recover from WinSock2 corruption
From Laage.se wiki
Windows XP with Service Pack 2 instructions To repair Winsock if you have Windows XP Service Pack 2 (SP2) installed, type netsh winsock reset at the command prompt, and then press ENTER.
Note Restart the computer after you run this command. Additionally, for computers that are running Windows XP SP2, there is a new netsh command that can rebuild the Winsock key. For more information, visit the following Web site: http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/winxppro/maintain/sp2netwk.mspx
Source and more information: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/811259/
