Customer was having many strange problems with his PC.

He also needed a second PC connected to the net (thus I needed to setup his new dlink di-524 wireless router).

After a marathon effort, I got everything plugged in, and fixed most problems… except:

Running windows updates and updating windows defender, the PC would give a 0x80072EE2 error.

Also, email (thunderbird) would work fine, except attempting to open attachments would generate a socket error 10053 , error 0x800CCC0F

The email problem was most unusual, so I tackled that first:

I reset the xp firewall back to its default setting, but no go.

I tried setting up outlook express, and it gave the same error message.

I tried webmail, and that worked.

OK, at this stage, I’m starting to suspect a problem with the ISP (hotkey).

I call hotkey support, and I’m surprised to hear that they have seen these problems before.

The cause: the dlink di-524 router.

I’m not sure exactly what, within the brand new di-524, is causing the problem, but all the problems vanished after replacing it with a similar netgear wireless router.