Twice in the last week I have had the following problem(s). Firstly my Vista HP did not completely boot up. Most of the Desktop appeared but when it was time for the Gadgets to appear (I only have the analogue clock) all I got was an empty white rectangle. Then a message appeared (which I did not record) referring to an Event Log. This I could not find. I tried to connect to the Internet but had only local connectivity. Futilely I tried to collect mail, which of course didn't work, and an error message came up which had Error Number: 0x800CCC44 in it. On each occasion I got back to a working setup by using System Restore.

However it's clear that System Restore may only give temporary respite so today I googled Error Number: 0x800CCC44 and the only hit was BleepingComputers! The heading said Viruses and Trojans... which is why I am here asking if it is likely that I am harbouring such unwelcome things. My PC Spyware Doctor with Antivirus gives me a complete bill of health.

The error 0x800CCC44 means that the Winsock stack was unable to open the sockets that it needs to connect to the internet. There can be many different reasons for this - so the best place to start with would be an independent scan to ensure that nothing has snuck by your PC Spyware Doctor software.

Here's a list of free online scans:
(Be advised that some of these scanners will pickup things in "quarantine" from other anti-virus programs - so review the results carefully)

http://housecall.trendmicro.com
http://www.pandasecurity.com/homeusers/solutions/activescan/
http://www.kaspersky.com/virusscanner Scan Only - no removal
http://www.bitdefender.com/scan8/ie.html
http://support.f-secure.com/enu/home/ols.shtml
http://us.mcafee.com/root/mfs/default.asp
http://onlinescan.avast.com/
http://ca.com/us/securityadvisor/virusinfo/scan.aspx
http://www.eset.com/onlinescan/

<links compiled on 02/14/2008>

If it finds an infection, I'd suggest posting over in the Am I Infected forum (located here: http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/forum103.html )
If it doesn't find an infection, post back here and we'll try and repair your networking (or will refer you to the Networking forum located here: http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/forum21.html )