It may be worth reading this page:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/928233/en-gb
I think you could safely download and run the fixit tool without any adverse effects. Of course you'll have to download the tool on a different machine and transfer it across. The alternative is manually entering the registry changes if you feel comfortable with this.
It just changes a 'flag' in the network settings so it's unlikely to do any harm.
Oh yes, welcome to Cable Forum.