Limited or No Connectivity

i recently downloaded a bunch of stuff and was unpleasantly infected with something. I used a program to get rid of it all (adaware personal SE), and got a little delete-happy. The computer's issues have been fixed (freezing, jumpy, etc), but now i have limited or no connectivity on both my WLAN and my ethernet connection.

Some details:
It's an HP pavilion notebook in the 1000 series (1080 maybe?) running XP. I bought it just shy of 2 years ago. I'm currently living in a house in france where i connect with wireless. The family uses a wannadoo modem provided by Orange. There are 2 other computer connected to the network: a desktop using some kind of wireless somehow? and another laptop. Both of these computers are having no issues connecting.

I then took the computer to another network, where both the wireless and an ethernet cable gave limited or no connectivity. Other computers on this network are operating fine (including the one i'm on), but mine still isn't working.

The computer recognizes local networks and connects always, but always has limited or no connectivity.

Any help would be wonderful.

i looked into it some more. i'm basically figuring that the computer can't find an IP address... god knows why. so i went into the command prompt and tried the ipconfig /renew command. it came back that the system that underlies the WSAStartup process is missing, and so it can't renew the IP. does anybody know what that system might be, and how I can replace it?

It's a risk, like anything else, but this has helped a few people:

WinSock XP Fix - fix XP internet connectivity download, reviewed and rated from Spychecker.com -