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

[rm]

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.

Comments

[feyandstrange.livejournal.com]

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.

[moshah.livejournal.com]

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!

[senseless.livejournal.com]

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