Very familiar with this problem...and they're right, it's a problem with faulty Winsock values in your registry. (The most common symptoms are hostname resolution failures (in other words, DNS doesn't work.)

Open Control Panel, then open the Network Properties....remove any and all adapters, clients, and protocols from the network properties, and click OK....but don't reboot yet.

Now, run Regedit.....find and delete the following keys:
(These may not be exactly right, but it's very close....I know the first and last parts are right.)

HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\services\Winsock

HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\services\Winsock2

HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\services\VxD\MSTCP
 

Now, go back to control panel, open the system icon, and go to Device Manager...click on Refresh. This will re-install the NIC, including TCP/IP and client for MS networks, and recreate the deleted registry entries.

Reboot, and you should be good to go.