Complete mystery - can someone advise please?

spartan92

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May 11, 2004
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Hi everyone, I have a weird situation happening with my brand new system I just built a month ago and wondered if someone could help. My system was working perfectly for the first few weeks after I built it (specifics of the hardware in my signature below) but last night in the middle of web surfing, my connection was lost.

I have two computers sharing the same Comcast connection and the laptop works fine. I've eliminated the modem and ethernet cable as culprits, so the problem must be the new machine. Looking at the Device Manager in windows, the system shows my network card as functioning fine but I cannot connect to the web. I have changed no settings on the system but just to make sure I did a System Restore to last week, yet still no ability to connect to the net.

According to everything on the system, the equipment is working fine, but obviously, something is wrong. Does anyone know what could be the issue? I'm stumped as to what settings I need to change. Thanks
 

riser

Illustrious
Do you have a router in place?

What IP address is the computer picking up? What IP does your Laptop get?

It sounds like you're not getting an IP address which could be coming from your ISP or if your router isn't handling DHCP for some reason.

The other thought would be to try a different NIC - it'll most likely be PnP so you really won't need to configure anything.

Post back your IP addresses and if you have a router in place. You should start with simple troubleshooting:

Ping localhost
Ping router
Ping gateway/ISP

Somewhere in that line, something will fail, which will give you an idea where the problem is.
 

spartan92

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May 11, 2004
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Riser, thanks for responding. I have a router but have also tried the connection without it and again, it works with the laptop but not the new desktop I built. The IP address appears to be dynamically assigned by the modem. Right now it's 67.172.129.228.

I took your advice and tried another NIC and it didn't help. I also tried totally unplugging the desktop from the power source and letting it sit awhile (saw this somewhere else online as a "cold boot") and it didn't do jack either. I'm totally stumped about this.

Can you please educate me: When I'm doing the pinging, what am I looking for?
 

riser

Illustrious
Your IP is coming from the ISP.. generally, you should have a number like 192.168.x.x if you're using a router with DHCP enabled.
Put your router back in place. Make sure DHCP is enabled. Your router should pick up an IP address of 67.172.x.x. Your laptop and desktop should pick up at 192.168.x.x number unless you've changed the DHCP range.
Some ISPs lock MAC addresses, so you may need to wait 4 hours or contact their tech support to explain you need to release the current MAC lock and pick up the new one (from your laptop to your router instead).

When you ping, it's a simple function. If it works, it'll tell you something replied. If it fails, it will say it failed. But that's not your problem.

You need your router in place to get your laptop and desktop working..
 

spartan92

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May 11, 2004
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Riser, thanks for the assistance. I finally got it worked out. Weird thing was that the laptop worked fine but the solution was to make sure I powered off the cable modem, router and computers, then turn on in the right order to reset the IP address apparently. Seems weird that after all I tried that this ended up being the solution but it works now. I finally got a tech support guy at Comcast who knew what he was doing and suggested this as the solution.

I appreciate your time and help.
 

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