atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums VOIP Phones & IP PBX Networking Network Connection

Hey guys, I normally work as a telephone technician, but I have a networking question. I included setting up a small office network with wiring and a new system installation. Managed to get the wiring and phones taken care of. But when I was doing the PC stuff I ran into a glitch. I installed a router and got all of the eight computers online except for one. I know the cabling is good as I can get on with my laptop from the jack.

I have the computer set up to automatically grab an IP address. I have rebooted, turned the fire wall on and off, and visually inspected the network card. I am geting a yellow/gold light but no green. I was thinking about changing out the network card but wanted to see if anyone had any other suggestions first.

Hope I am not showing my lack of expertise too much, any help would be appreciated.

J

Check your wires again, I had a simular problem once and found my laptop is only half duplex so it only used 2 pair and PC was a full duplex that needed all 4 pair.

Have you tried a patch cord right into the switch or router from the computer in question. Did you scan the cables that would rule out the cabling too.

You could try a USB network adapter too.

NIC cards are really cheap, and some of those old drivers were a royal pain. Changing the card might be the shortest path, but before you do you might go check the Device Manager and see what it says about the card. You should also try a ping command to see if you can get to the router. The TCP stack is made up of many layers that load in order. Ping is a very low level test and therefore loads early in the stack.

Where is the device manager? I cannot find it.

Right click on My Computer, then select Properties, Hardware, Device Manager.

Thanks I will give it a try!!!

What type of PC? Many Dell PCs use gold/amber LEDs to indicate a 100Mb link, and you'll only see green on a 10Mb connection. They also use a blinking yellow to indicate activity. Seem strange to me. I always thought of green as being the "Everything is OK" color!

Does the PC get an IP address? Enter "ipconfig" at the command prompt to see what the current settings are.

Lastly, was that PC working fine in its last location? If it has a network card and not a built-in NIC on the motherboard, it may be worth your while to pull the card and reseat it. May have been bumped good during transit.

They were using AOL with dial up before the move so the network card was not being used before the move. I will check the IP config also. It is a Compaq PC. I am going to go out there with another card just in case, but I will reseat the current card first.

Going out there tomorrow I will let you guys know. Thanks Again!

I had one about an hour ago. Drove me nuts. It could see the card, I could remove and reinstall drivers, but could only get a 0.0.0.0 address. I really thought it was a DoS attack. It was working fine the day before, with no configuration changes. Finally decided to crack the case, remove and reseat the card and poof. Everything worked fine.

Go figure. :shrug:

It was a fluke and may not work for you, but if you do remove the card you might take a pink pencil eraser and rub it across both sides of the contacts on the card before reseating it.

Okay, went back onsite today and checked the ipconfig and device manager. Didn't see anything crazy, but still can't connect. I installed a new card. Still no go. I then brought the station back to my office and put it at a known good location. No connection. Changed the slot the PCI card was in. Still no. It is pulling a really wierd ip address. Not even close to 192.168.0.1xx.
Any advise?

Is it a 169.254.X.X?

yes, I have released and renewed and it will not give me an address.

Is the computer running windows 98 or windows 2000 ? It sounds like it cannot find the DHCP server to be assigned an ip address and APIPA is turned on in the options and using a 169.254.x.y . The commands to use are differnt in win 98 & win 2000 .

The 169 series does indeed come from the system not being able to obtain a DHCP address. I would try a couple of things. SOMETIMES this can be resolved by removing and reinstalling TCP/IP. That being said, Microsoft in an effort to protect us from ourselves has made it very difficult in XP to remove the protocol in some of the versions. You should also see if you can make the system work with a Static IP.

Now for the bad news. We had one about a year ago that no matter what we did, it was not going to resolve the issue. The problem was hardware and it was in the motherboard.

Good luck and keep us posted.

It is running XP

This will show you how to reset the TCP stack:

https://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;299357&FR=1&PA=1&SD=HSCH

It's a bit over the head of most people we deal with but I'm sure you can handle it. There is also a utility available called WinsockXPFix.exe. You can do a google search to find it. That utility claims to rebuild the stack. On that note let me say I have not tried the utility so I can't tell you if it really works.

Have you checked the status lights on the back of the NIC card to see what the trouble shooting guide recommends . If I had to guess I would say it is either a bad NIC card or a faulty patch cable connected to the NIC . Connect this faulty computer using a cross over cable to another working computer and see if they can communicate . If they cannot you either have a faulty NIC card or a faulty motherboard in the problem computer .

alright I can renew my IP address and I am no longer getting the bogus one. Now it is 192.168.x.x And I can ping another computer and I can ping IP addresses (usually only about 3 out of 4 tries) I can ping my website ping www.blahblah.com

But when I go to internet explorer and type in a website I get the cannot not see page. I am definately getting closer. When I started I could not pull an IP address.

Okay, I got it!

I am honestly not sure what the issue was. I have been in so many screens I have never seen before that it might have been a combination of things. But after I was able to ping to the outside world I was suspicious of the browser, so I started to mess with IE. Then after I think about the 15th or 20th restart of the day It works. Definately learned a lot! Thanks to all that responded!

I hope I was of some help . Thanks for the all is ok now update .

Glad you got it fixed Jadix. One of the screens you got to that fixed the IE problem was most likely Tools>Internet Opitons>Connections>LAN Settings.

Whatever the case, Congratulations! :toast:

The only "4 pair" connections would be in the rare case of some Gigabit equipment.

Half duplex; simply means that the dte or dce device can only send or receive, but not both simulteanoulsy.

You could of also ruled out the DHCP problem by adding a staic IP address to your machine as a test. If you could get out after adding the static IP address it would most likely be a DHCP issue. Sorry I couldent jump in earlier to help :-(

The problem you've experienced is pretty common in situations where a PC has been infected with some type of malware/spyware. Screws with registry keys for IE and messes with the TCP/IP stack. That's assuming you did have to use the Winsock fix...