I have a PC running Win 98 SE, after rebuilding it due to replacement of a
hard drive. Everything worked fine until I receive an automatic update
message asking me to install the update. I followed the instructions and
installed the updates.

Now, I found out that I can't connect to my network. After some digging and
found out that my subnet mask picked up is 255.0.0.0 instead of
255.255.255.0.

I check my router settings and they are connected. I connected a laptop to
the SAME PC network cable, it was assigned the correct IP address and subnet
mask. As soon as I reconnect the network cable to this pc and performed an
ipconfig /release and then ipconfig /renew_all and still seeing the 255.0.0.0
netmask.

Can someone please help me by suggesting as how to resolve this problem ?

Thanks in advance.