My charter wont connect

[helpme64]

Hello I was searching the web when one day the houses power went out for a few minutes. I Restarted my computer and then tried to sign on. It said page cannot be found, so, I turned off the modem and let it cool down and still nothing happend. I checked the ethernet cable to make sure it was plugged in properly and I even tried switching the cable. I tried everything and all the lights light up as normal. enet,recv,sync,ready all lighted up or flashed like they normally did but the send wont light up. I do not know if that is supposed to light up but my internet wont connect and I have tried using the repair connections wizard under control panel. It says something like problem "problem cannot be repaired" and Im not sure because im on another computer but I think it said it couldnt reregister DHCP or something close.
PLease Help

[DMR]

Your modem may have taken a hard enough hit from the power outage that it will need more of a reset than a simple power on/off gives it. Contact your ISP and have them run a test on the modem from their end to begin with.

[helpme64]

I finally got around to calling charter. hey said it was an area outage and no one in my area can connect...THEY LIE!!! My grandpa's computer has charter also and he lives about 5 houses down and im on this computer right now.
This is the error message---->
The following steps of the repair operation failed:
Renewing the IP address
Refreshing all DHCP leases and re-registering DNS
PLease contact your network administrator or ISP

[DMR]

The modem may have been thrown into some weird state by the power outage.

1. Have Charter run a test on your modem from their end as soon as they clear up the "outage" problem.

2. If Charter gave you a modem/Internet connection setup CD, run the setup program again.

3. What's the exact make & model # of the modem?

Of course, it's possible that the problem is with your computer and not the modem, but try to verify that the modem is OK first.

[helpme64]

I am guessing the problem is with my computer because somehow svchost.exe is changing itself to: (supposed to be blank).
i have a trial version of hacker eliminator and that is what it says. I guess by changing the registry key to nothing it means that it is being Deleted. When I go to manage programs DCHP is off and has an error when i try to turn it on. It turned on once but then it just wouldnt work. I am waiting to buy a 80 GB external hard-drive so I can take all my music and other personal things and save them to that and then reinstall XP Home, or Format that drive im not sure which to try.

[DMR]

I am guessing the problem is with my computer because somehow svchost.exe is changing itself to: (supposed to be blank).
i have a trial version of hacker eliminator and that is what it says.

Can you clarify what you're trying to say there or give us the full text of the warning/message please? It's a bit unclear as to just what is being changed, but it could be the sign of a malicious infection.

When I go to manage programs DCHP is off and has an error...

Again, specifics would be good; the more information you can give us up front, the faster we'll be able to help you track down the cause of the problem.

[helpme64]

OK I had someone that knows alot about computers fix some stuff. My internet is working and he told me to get Sygate firewall and change my browser to mozilla firefox. This made things quite a bit better but there are alot of port scans and a few suspicious application hijacks. Here is the latest one:
Application Hijacking has been detected
The application: C:\WINDOWS\system32\cisvc.exe try to launch another application: C:\WINDOWS\system32\cidaemon.exe
I can not scan the proxy because whatever did the hijack has its IP set to 0.0.0.0 . I also figured out that another remote computer was accessing svchost.exe which somehow had something to do with my internet connection. I blocked access to it and now internet is fine. I need to know what to do about these port scans and is this related to spyware? I my computer being hacked into or anything?

[dlh6213]

Since some type of malware or hijacking is suspected here, I suggest you get HijackThis from here:
http://www.malwareremoval.com/downloads.html (look for the selfextracting link in line #2)

Close all browser windows, 'Scan and Save Log' with hijackthis; start a new thread in the Virus forum, and copy and paste the log there along with a description of your problem.

[DMR]

Application Hijacking has been detected
The application: C:\WINDOWS\system32\cisvc.exe try to launch another application: C:\WINDOWS\system32\cidaemon.exe

That one is actually a legit event; both of those .exes are Windows programs related to content indexing.

Keep in mind that firewall programs are not perfect, they may do not differentiate between valid and malicious activity (until/unless you tell them to do so), and they are not "aware" of all of the different programs/processes that might possibly generate network activity. When you first install a firewall package there can be a "learning period" wherein you will need to tell the software how it should handle events that it does not know what to do with. As you do so, the firewall program will eventually gain enough knowledge of your system to be able to handle events on its own. As you can probably guess from what I've just said, you'll need to know a bit about networking and network applications in oder to make your firewall most effective, because as it comes "out-of-the-box", the firewall may not be ideally configured for your particular situation.

I also figured out that another remote computer was accessing svchost.exe which somehow had something to do with my internet connection.

svchost is a Windows process which is responsible for handling many other Windows processes/services, so activity involving svchost is often normal. Good call on blocking the access attempt though; that sort of communication isn't something you just want to blindly allow.

In terms of the port scans, there isn't much you can do to actually stop them from happening; the key is to make sure that that the scanners find no open ports which they can exploit. Think of the scans as a door-to-door salesman making his rounds through your neighborhood: you usually can't stop him from knocking on your door, but you don't have to let him know you're home. To make your system as secure as possible in this regard, you should disable all services which you don't use, and have the firewall block communication on all ports you don't use.

A few common examples of services/ports that the average person does not use but that do pose a security threat are:

FTP- port 21
telnet- port 23
http (web server)- ports 80 & 8080
IRC (chat)- port 194