ipconfig error (ipconfg)

[mcowley]

Good morning all. Hope the half term is going well.

Got a bit of a strange one for you. We mainly use HPs round here, but have one room of Dell Optiplex machines. I have come across an interesting issue with these Dells. Whenever I try to run ipconfig I get an error:

‘ipconfg’ is not recognised as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.

Not the missing ‘i’ in the command error. I promise you it is in the command when I type it. This affects all of our Dell desktops. These machines are setup from the same imaging process as the rest of our PCs and are fully updated (XP Pro SP3 with full WSUS updates).

I’ve had a look around the web and can’t find any matching issues. Even though Google keeps trying to help by spelling the command correctly.

I’ve checked the PATH variable just in case, and that is correct.

This isn’t major, but if anyone has seen the same thing happen, or has any ideas to get it to work it would be great to hear them.

Cheers:
Mike.

[kmount]

Tried c:\windows\system32\ipconfig.exe ?

[mcowley]

Tried c:\windows\system32\ipconfig.exe ?

Ah thanks. Ok here we go. That works, the info is now shown. That solves one issue, but why would Windows change the entered command of ipconfig to ipconfg?

[Michael]

Right click My Computer > Properties > Advanced > Environment Variables button. Under System Variables locate an entry called 'Path' and add the following (if missing) at the beginning -

%SystemRoot%\system32;

Now repeat the process of opening up a command prompt and running ipconfig. If it works, you'll have to do this on every machine. As to why it's not there, I am really not sure. I hope you didn't image any spyware

[mcowley]

Right click My Computer > Properties > Advanced > Environment Variables button. Under System Variables locate an entry called 'Path' and add the following (if missing) at the beginning -

%SystemRoot%\system32;

Now repeat the process of opening up a command prompt and running ipconfig. If it works, you'll have to do this on every machine. As to why it's not there, I am really not sure. I hope you didn't image any spyware

The PATH setting to %system%\system32; is set. I've even tried directly setting it to C:\windows\system32 on the off chance it might make a difference. The ipconfig command still fails.

I should have stated in my first post that all other commands in the system32 director like ping, or launching regedit work without any problem.

[Michael]

What about other ipconfig commands such as:

ipconfig /all
ipconfig /flushdns
ipconfig /displaydns

Do these work?

[Gatt]

do a search for ipconfig.* and ipconfg.*
there should only be %systemroot%\system32\ipconfig.exe

If you find anythign else - move them and/or delete them

[Michael]

I am beginning to wonder if it's spyware/virus related now. There's definitely no such command as ipconfg

What about if you go in Safe Mode with Networking and repeat the same procedure, does ipconfig work?

[mcowley]

Sorry for the delay in getting back on this. Love the first day of term.

Anyway, all ipconfig commands and operations cause the same error.
Our Sophos isn't picking anything up on the computers as a virus or spyware. I'll run some other tools to check on that one.
There are no files similiar to ipconfig within the System32 directory.

Thanks for all the suggestions. I'll do some further tests and let you know if I find anything.

Cheers.

[mac_shinobi]

there is a registry key that you have to set to get command prompt to startup in the system32 directory ( at least thats what I did to work around it and just run the ipconfig command from the system32 directory )

How to change the default startup directory for Command Prompt?