Rabble rabble net trouble

[Faulty]

So I'm having a bit of internet trouble. I just had internet installed in my apartment, and when I plug it into my netbook it works, but when I plug it into my desktop it doesn't. The net worked on my desktop at home, so I'm not sure what's up. It's been hot, so could it be overheating or something? Any help would be appreciated.

[Erloas]

Probably IP settings.
Go to the settings on your network connection. Find the network connection, select properties from the right-click menu, select Internet Protocol (TCP/IP), click properties, and all of your settings should be set to obtain automatically.

Thats the most common problem when switching networks. Very little actually needs a pre-defined IP address, but it happens sometimes. And when they are set it generally won't work if hooked to another network.

There are a lot of other things to test and try if that doesn't work, but its a starting point at least.

[lesser_minion]

Did you use your netbook with your previous setup? It's not clear from your post, and it might be relevant.

Otherwise, it's entirely possible that your desktop has been set up to connect one way with your previous set up while here it's expected to connect differently -- do you know any more about your home network?

[Faulty]

I did not use my netbook on my previous network by connecting by cable. Also, everything is already set to automatic. My home network was on a router. I actually used my netbook wirelessly there, so I never had to connect with the cable.

[lesser_minion]

Hmm... that complicates things.

How does your computer respond if you plug the ethernet cable into it while it's switched on? Are there any lights? Does it give you a note in the system tray telling you that it's connecting?

I think we need to know a little more about what's going on before we can even try to diagnose the problem here.

[Faulty]

Hmm... that complicates things.

How does your computer respond if you plug the ethernet cable into it while it's switched on? Are there any lights? Does it give you a note in the system tray telling you that it's connecting?

I think we need to know a little more about what's going on before we can even try to diagnose the problem here.

A green light shines out of the jack where I plug it in on the tower. In the system try there's a little connection image. There's two computers representing the network and a little yellow dot goes back and forth at the bottom (the "connecting" animation) but then it gets the little yellow triangle with the ! on it and says it has limited or no connectivity.

Tell me what I need to tell you and I will.

Both comps are running windows XP btw.

[factotum]

Have you got the network set to pick up its IP address automatically?

[Faulty]

Yes. It was set to that when I checked.

[Erloas]

Ok, first thing to try would be plug both computers into the network.

Go to the start menu, go to run, enter cmd into the box and hit ok

When that opens up a dos like prompt enter ipconfig and hit enter
it should give an IP address and a default gateway
Give us those numbers from each computer (the laptop migh have two, one for wireless, one for wired)

Are you connected straight to the DLS/Cable modem? Is there a router/hub/switch in the network?
Generally your IP address should be something like 192.168.0.3
The first two numbers will almost always be that, the 0 I've seen as 0, 1, 2, and 100 (though anything between 0 and 255 is possible).
The gateway is generally about the same with the last number being 1. If you are connected to the modem directly it could be some completely different number for the gateway.

Another question, does anything about the internet work on the desktop, such as a messenger program, Steam, program auto-updates, or anything like that? It could be a DNS issue instead if that is the case. If you do ipconfig/all the last part it should show is DNS servers and they should be the same on both computers. Although I assume you already checked to see if the DNS server was set to auto-load when you checked the IP address auto thing, its in the same place just a different tab.

[Faulty]

Ok, first thing to try would be plug both computers into the network.

Go to the start menu, go to run, enter cmd into the box and hit ok

When that opens up a dos like prompt enter ipconfig and hit enter
it should give an IP address and a default gateway
Give us those numbers from each computer (the laptop migh have two, one for wireless, one for wired)

Are you connected straight to the DLS/Cable modem? Is there a router/hub/switch in the network?
Generally your IP address should be something like 192.168.0.3
The first two numbers will almost always be that, the 0 I've seen as 0, 1, 2, and 100 (though anything between 0 and 255 is possible).
The gateway is generally about the same with the last number being 1. If you are connected to the modem directly it could be some completely different number for the gateway.

Another question, does anything about the internet work on the desktop, such as a messenger program, Steam, program auto-updates, or anything like that? It could be a DNS issue instead if that is the case. If you do ipconfig/all the last part it should show is DNS servers and they should be the same on both computers. Although I assume you already checked to see if the DNS server was set to auto-load when you checked the IP address auto thing, its in the same place just a different tab.

For my laptop I got:

IP Address: 24.201.40.52
Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway: 24.201.40.1

For my desktop:

IP Address: 169.254.109.68
Subnet Mask: 255.255.0.0
Default Gateway: it's blank

Anyway, it's an apartment building so I have the cable coming out of the wall. It came like that. The guy plugged that into a box along with a power cable (which powers the box) and the ethernet cable which attatches to my computer.

[Erloas]

Well thats clearly the problem, the desktop doesn't seem to be obtaining the IP address automatically from the network like it is supposed to.

Since you said you've already checked that is set to obtain automatically it means we've missed something somewhere.
First, does the desktop have two ethernet (network) ports on it? You might have checked the settings for one, and had it plugged into another one, and its not uncommon to have two on computers. In fact I fixed that exact problem at work a month ago when the IT people couldn't figure out why it wasn't working.

Second... when you disconnect the computers from the network and do the ipconfig again does it show the same numbers or are they something different?
If you do the ipconfig/all on the desktop the last two lines should be dates, the obtained date should be the last time you reset your computer (or potentially a day if you leave your computer on all the time). That doesn't really tell us any more except reconfirming that it is not in fact getting the IP address from the network but instead holding some old one.

One other option is to do ipconfig/release then follow it with ipconfig/renew which should release the old IP and obtain a new one. If when you do the release it doesn't set the IP to 0.0.0.0 then the IP address is set to a static IP and not set to obtain automatically. This shouldn't be doing anything different then resetting the computer, but maybe it will show something more.

edit: and by cable, you mean like the same cable that is plugged into your TV. Obviously everything is a cable, but only sometimes is it Cable. Not that it matters too much, I don't think any settings on the cable modem could be an issue at this point.

[Faulty]

Well thats clearly the problem, the desktop doesn't seem to be obtaining the IP address automatically from the network like it is supposed to.

Since you said you've already checked that is set to obtain automatically it means we've missed something somewhere.
First, does the desktop have two ethernet (network) ports on it? You might have checked the settings for one, and had it plugged into another one, and its not uncommon to have two on computers. In fact I fixed that exact problem at work a month ago when the IT people couldn't figure out why it wasn't working.

Second... when you disconnect the computers from the network and do the ipconfig again does it show the same numbers or are they something different?
If you do the ipconfig/all on the desktop the last two lines should be dates, the obtained date should be the last time you reset your computer (or potentially a day if you leave your computer on all the time). That doesn't really tell us any more except reconfirming that it is not in fact getting the IP address from the network but instead holding some old one.

One other option is to do ipconfig/release then follow it with ipconfig/renew which should release the old IP and obtain a new one. If when you do the release it doesn't set the IP to 0.0.0.0 then the IP address is set to a static IP and not set to obtain automatically. This shouldn't be doing anything different then resetting the computer, but maybe it will show something more.

edit: and by cable, you mean like the same cable that is plugged into your TV. Obviously everything is a cable, but only sometimes is it Cable. Not that it matters too much, I don't think any settings on the cable modem could be an issue at this point.

There's only one ethernet port. However, in network connections, there are two networks listed. One is:

1394 Connection
Connected, Firewalled
1349 net adapter

The other is:

Local Area Connection 2
Network cable unplugged, firewalled
NVIDIA nForce Networking Controller #2


When I try to run ipconfig with the cable unplugged it says:

Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection 2:
Media State............: Media disconnected

When I run ipconfig/all with it unplugged the last line (Physical Address) says 00-13-D4-FF-14-F2. When I run it plugged in I don't get any dates.

When you released, it worked, but when I renewed it said "An error occurred while renewing interface Local Area Connection 2: unable to contact your DHCP server. Request has timed out."

And yeah, he unplugged the tv and used the same cable.

[Erloas]

Sorry I didn't get back to this sooner, something came up at work and then it was a while before I got online at home.

When you do the ipconfig/all there is a DHCP IP address as well, I think without anything connected it should be blank or 0.0.0.0, if you have anything else there it might mean you have a predefined DHCP server set and now you can't find it. It would seem like an odd thing to do unless the network you were on before was complicated.
But at any rate, to check that go back to the TCP/IP settings/properties as I said earlier.
There should be an Advanced button and that should have additional settings. DNS servers should be empty, DHCP should be enabled, there should be no predefined addresses or anything there.

As an alternative method, you can get the IP numbers from your laptop, then change the properties on the desktop from obtain automatically and use the numbers you got from the laptop and enter them into the desktop for IP, gateway, and DNS.
At least attempting that might show something else, its not a long term solution but it can at least tell us something. Depending how quickly your ISP cycles IP addresses it might not last for more then a day, and it might work forever.

[Cealocanth]

Who's your provider? Comcast's been having a lot of weird stuff like that lately.

[factotum]

If IPCONFIG is telling you that the media is unplugged even when you have it plugged in, there's something wrong with the machine. Could be a faulty network port--you could test that by booting it from a Ubuntu LiveCD or something; if it still can't get an address even then, it's not a software issue but a hardware one.

[Faulty]

Sorry I didn't get back to this sooner, something came up at work and then it was a while before I got online at home.

When you do the ipconfig/all there is a DHCP IP address as well, I think without anything connected it should be blank or 0.0.0.0, if you have anything else there it might mean you have a predefined DHCP server set and now you can't find it. It would seem like an odd thing to do unless the network you were on before was complicated.
But at any rate, to check that go back to the TCP/IP settings/properties as I said earlier.
There should be an Advanced button and that should have additional settings. DNS servers should be empty, DHCP should be enabled, there should be no predefined addresses or anything there.

As an alternative method, you can get the IP numbers from your laptop, then change the properties on the desktop from obtain automatically and use the numbers you got from the laptop and enter them into the desktop for IP, gateway, and DNS.
At least attempting that might show something else, its not a long term solution but it can at least tell us something. Depending how quickly your ISP cycles IP addresses it might not last for more then a day, and it might work forever.

When I do ipconfig/all with it unconnected there is no DHCP IP space or anything.

Anyway, I checked and DNS servers is empty, DHCP is enabled and there is no predefined address.

Even when I tell it to use the netbook's IP, it says there is limited or no connectivity. : \

[lesser_minion]

I think I'm pretty much stumped then.

Are you resetting the modem each time you plug it into a new device?

[Faulty]

How do I reset the modem? I have been plugging and unplugging it from my netbook and it's been fine. :<

[lesser_minion]

How do I reset the modem? I have been plugging and unplugging it from my netbook and it's been fine. :<

Unplug the modem from your computer, unplug it from the power, wait thirty seconds, plug the modem back into the power, wait another thirty seconds, plug it into your desktop.

Sometimes it's different, depending on the make and model modem you're using.

[Faulty]

Reseting the modem worked. I am typing this post from my desktop. :B

Gee that is silly. Thank you so much for the help guys. I appreciate it.

[Erloas]

When the tech set up the cable did he get any information off of your computer, or ask for any specific information when you signed up originally?

I don't think it is common practice anywhere, but I remember when I first got cable they tied to service to a specific computer, they used a unique address (MAC address on the NIC card) to verify the right computer was connected and it wouldn't work with other computers. I don't believe this is still done, but it is possible in some places.

I'm going to make the assumption that home was with your parents and this apartment is at college. Would it be possible to connect the desktop up to the old network and verify the ethernet port is still working, and to try the laptop on the old network to try and identify anything unusual about the old network that could point to what needs to be changes on the desktop.

If you had a crossover cable (and almost no one does) there are some other things we could test. If you had a router or switch we could test a few other things (and with a laptop a wireless router wouldn't be a bad idea to pick up anyway... but one thing at a time).

One other thing to try is uninstall your network adapter drivers, restart your computer, it should auto-detect new hardware and re-install the drivers and should reset most settings that would have been set before. Actually should have tried this earlier but I didn't think of it. The Device Manager can be found from the Control Panel or right-clicking My Computer and selecting manage. That will show network adapters, select everything there and uninstall them.

edit: well never mind then. I guess thats what I get for assuming the basics of resetting everything is something that everyone just does. By chance did you have the laptop connected to the modem first? I'm wondering if the modem doesn't switch between devices well, sort of like the first part I mentioned in this post.

[Faulty]

Yeah, I had it on the laptop first.

Also, I apologize for that. >_> Just... never been in this situation before. Hurr. Hey, at least it was plugged in. :P

[lesser_minion]

It's fine. Resetting the modem isn't really an intuitive response when the problem seems to be with the computer.