On my home PC I’ve lost the ability to open web pages by putting their IP addresses into the address bar - can anybody help me figure out why?
I have appliances on my home network that are configured from their own built-in web page, including two fileservers and a router. I’d type their address in, and the page would open. But now IE reports that the page is unavailable.
The devices are still there - I can read and write files to both the fileservers, for example. And I can run the configuration utilities that came with them (these use mac addresses instead of IP).
My network is a Windows peer-to-peer hardwired network running fixed IP addresses (no DHCP). There’s a 16 port switch, 2 or 3 PCs, the fileservers, sometimes other things. I have tried IE on two different PCs, my home desktop and my corporate laptop (whose configuration I’m not entirely in charge of).
Maybe the trouble started a few months ago when I stopped using the DirecWay satellite internet service. I am pretty certain things worked right before then, but don’t remember accessing the device web pages since then. I have tried disabling Windows Firewall but am not sure if I have (some indicators say it’s disabled and some say it’s running). One thing I’m not sure how to do is specify DNS servers. I have left the ones recommended by DirecWAY in place because I don’t have any replacements. Right now I have no ISP and I think I shouldn’t need DNS servers as a result, but not sure.
Do you have to use a proxy server with your current internet setup? (look in Tools>Internet Options>Connections>LAN Settings) - if the proxy server checkbox is ticked, click the, make sure the checkbox that says ‘bypass proxy server for local addresses’ is also checked, otherwise IE will attempt to contact your ISP to get routing info for the entered IP address.
>Do you have to use a proxy server with your current internet setup?
I don’t have a current internet setup. Don’t know if I was using a proxy server when I had DirecWay but certainly didn’t change this since then. Why might this have changed? I used to be able to access the web pages by IP address whether the DirecWay “modem” was plugged in or not, and now it’s just unplugged (and in the trash but how would my system know that?)
>(look in Tools>Internet Options>Connections>LAN Settings) - if the proxy server checkbox is ticked, click the,
Click the what?
>make sure the checkbox that says ‘bypass proxy server for local addresses’ is also checked, otherwise IE will attempt to contact your ISP to get routing info for the entered IP address.
Thanks. This does sound like a plausible reason for what I’m seeing - at least, based on my small networking comprehension. I’ll look around here!
Ooops, the ‘click the…’ thing originally said ‘click the advanced button’, but I edited it out because it was wrong; the ‘bypass proxy server’ checkbox (which should be checked if the ‘use proxy server’ one is checked) is on the connections page - not in the advanced settings.