rm | help me, obi-wan kenobi and why the fuck aren't you taking my calls? -- router problems part deux

help me, obi-wan kenobi and why the fuck aren't you taking my calls? -- router problems part deux

Thank you for all those kind suggestions, unfortunately, they didn't work.

Here's more of the nitty gritty details.

My computer, running Windows 2000 professional, is connected to th router with a wire. This is successful, and I have internet access.

Megan's computer, running Windows XP, is:
- connected to the router (when i log into the router I see her)
- can see the good signal strength from the network
- currently sporting the proper IP.

Only problem is, she still can't get to any websites. She's dicked around with the firewall stuff, and doesn't think that is the problem, but stumbled on something just now, that when she tried to change it said she didn't have Administrator priviledges. The thing is, there is only one account on her computerm "Megan" -- no Administrator. She is the Administrator. is there some secret account she needs to get into? How? I don't know XP for shit.

Thnx.

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Try logging in as "Administrator", password defaults to blank. (I think hitting ctrl-alt-del at login gets you a login like WIn2k had.)

In xp, Control Panel - User Accounts, you should be able to see all the accounts and whether they have admin privileges or not. She should have them, but you never know.

Administrtor only shows up if you haven't installed any other accounts, which isn't the case here if she shows up as Megan.

There's an immensely handy widget called TweakUI which helps you get into a lot of these settings (on various Windows versions) - it has a setting that will let you always make Administrator visible. It's a free download from Microsoft - go here:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/downloads/powertoys/xppowertoys.mspx

hopefully some of that helps. once somebody is in as an account with admin privileges, you may need to whomp on the firewall and network security settings some more.

TweakUI is a great suggestion! I had forgotten about that one.

If she has an IP address already, can she ping another one? Try pinging "www.yahoo.com". If that doesn't work, try "ping IPADDRESS", where IPADDRESS is a good IP address that you know. (Like 68.142.197.65, one of Yahoo's IPs). If that works, that tells you something is screwed up with DNS, which might point you in the right direction.

If that's not it, try turning off the XP Firewall and see if that helps at all.

The other tool to try is "tracert". Try "tracert IPADDRESS" and see what comes up. It should provide a trace of where the packets are going, and might give you a clue to where packets are being lost.

Good luck!

Try F8 at boot to get the option to log in as Admin.

I wish I had more help to offer than I do. The suggestions above sound good, to me. If this were Linux, I could be much more help, but I avoid Microsoft software like the plague.

I can offer this, though. The fact that she's got a proper IP address means that a lot is working. In fact, if I understand correctly, the default network configuration for windows is to acquire an IP address and other configuration data through DHCP. You might note that DHCP, on the client side, functions before IP is really configured, so it can't generally operate through the normal IP layers in the operating system. Typically DHCP clients open a raw socket and construct and decode the relevant packets themselves, rather than count on the OS to do it like a more typical application would. What this means is that DHCP clients often effectively bypass any builtin firewall type software, because the firewall software hooks into the very operating system IP handling that DHCP clients bypass.

This means that, even if her firewall configuration is completely wrong, her system might well successfully acquire its IP address, default router, and perhaps its DNS server address through DHCP, even if her firewall software prevents any other network communication from happening.

Knowing what I do about IP and DHCP, in general, even if I don't know a lot about Windows in particular, I would guess it might well be a firewall issue, and that you might have to log in as an administrator to fix it.

With any luck, though, you'll continue to get advice from people who know much more about Windows than I do, and they'll help you figure this out.

Adrian

Some routers only handle one-pc-per-service. Mine is that way. In other words, if I'm getting web pages, my wife's pc won't respond. This isn't usually a problem, so I doubt that you have the same problem.

Make sure that her wired network port doesn't have an IP address. This has happened to my wife. If this adapter has an IP address, the PC will keep trying to use the wired card istead of the wireless card. If her wired card is set as a static IP address, that will really hose you over.
Start->Run->cmd
ipconfig /all

To fix
ipconfig /clearall
ipconfig /renewall

Okay . . here's a link to some techie people having the same problem I am!

http://forums.practicallynetworked.com/printthread.php?s=51dfcc3f56b13995581e3b293d49ca0f&t=4717&page=5&pp=15

Maybe that will help later, not that I have time. Sigh.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only