net adaptors stuck at "acquiring network address", 0 s/r packets, remote procedure call server failing

Hello all,
I've checked in this forum and have found a couple of threads tat relate to the same thing, but it seemed as though the solution was to reinstall the operating system (something which is not possible at the moment because of a missing xp disk). I'm running windows XP pro 32 bit with service pack 3 on an HP 8510W notebook workstation.

Last night I was hit by a rather nasty virus, from a source that still remains unknown. It hijacked the list of hosted processes running under SVCHost.exe (no it was not scvhost.exe), and caused ping.exe to repeatedly launch and flood random IP addresses with huge amounts of data. I managed to get rid of this using microsoft security essentials, but a few times before I did this, and now consistently afterward, I have no internet connection. I've tried with several different wireless networks and two different ethernet cables connected to two completely separate networks. I also have another older HP laptop on the same network, which i'm using to type this message.
The general idea of this is as follows:
0 packets showing as sent / received in any network adaptor's properties, except WiFi which shows 2 both sent and received when I first connect, then stays there.
IP and subnet both set to 0.0.0.0.
doing an ipconfig /renew produces the following: "The RPC server is unavailable."
The remote procedure call service is started when I look under services.msc.
uninstalling and reinstalling devices does nothing.
doing a system restore does nothing.
I noticed earlier that trying to start windows firewall also produced an error 10050: A socket operation encountered a dead network.
Any help with this would be very much appreciated, as this s only a borrowed laptop and is currently my only form of internet access.

Edit: I forgot to mention that running both microsoft security essentials and malwarebytes had absolutely no effect either.