Cannot connect to the internet - DNS problems?

Factual Questions
1

Ok, I’ve got problems with my internet connection, and I’ve not been able to solve them myself, so I thought I’d see if any of the teeming millions could help me.

Basically, I can’t get on the internet. I’m posting this on an installation of Windows on a different harddrive, but with the original harddrive attached, where the internet is working properly.

On the installation with the problem, I can get through the checking username and password, and logon stage. I can also ping IP addresses, but not their associated name (e.g. I can ping 212.58.224.124, but not www.bbc.co.uk). If I try visiting a website through a browser (Firefox or Internet Explorer), it gives an error message, which unfortunately I haven’t made a note of, but I can check it when I bootup on that installation next. This applies if I use the IP address or name. I also cannot use other programs that access the internet.

The internet was working well before. I have made some changes recently. I’ve put in a new hard drive (Or rather re-installed an old one), but the internet was working when I put that in, and this hard drive is the one with the installation with the internet connection working. The only other change I can think of is the installation of a TV card, and installation of associated software. There was a complex series of installation, uninstallation, reinstallation of this software, which might have been associated with the problem, but I’m can’t be certain.

My dad thinks it might be a DNS problem, but we don’t know how to solve the problem, whatever it is.

As for the system involved, it has Windows ME, with two hard drives (one 80GB, the other 40GB). The internet connection is ADSL, connecting through a PCI ADSL modem. Both installations are running with the same hardware, the one with working internet is just booting from the 40 GB harddrive, the other one from the 80GB harddrive.

2

Well, it would seem that the issue resides on your computer.
You should be able to check the dns by logging on to the internet if necessary (it sounds like you said have to do this in your set up) going to the start menu > run at the prompt type in cmd and hit enter. Then when the box comes up type in ipconfig /all . this will, among other things tell you what dns you comp is trying to use. Make a note of the addresses it gives you for your DNS servers.
Then do the same thing with the other installation.
If the two sets of values are not the same, you’ll need to correct the values no the broken installation to match those on he working one.
If the values are the same then I’d guess that the problem lies somewhere other than the dns issues.

3

I’ve done that. In fact the cmd command didn’t work, but I assumed that it just loaded the dos prompt, so I loaded it from the start menu, and ran ipconfig from there.

The DNS servers listed are the same. In fact, the only differences between the two installations seems to be the Host Name (which seems to be constant for each installation), and the IP Address and Default Gateway listed under the ‘PPP Adapter’, which I assume just means the Modem, as the only other entry is for ‘Microsoft TV/Video Connection’, which would be the TV Card. These values seems to be the same as each different, but change each time you access the internet, so I assume they are just allocated by the ISP.

4

If you can ping by number but not by name then you most likely have a DNS issue. Your entries for the PPP / ADSL adapter should be set to DHCP unless you’ve got a static IP address. Any addresses you enter manually will over-ride addresses given by the DHCP server.

In Windows ME, there is no CMD.EXE - that’s NT / 2000 / XP, but I thought the command for getting your TCPIP configuration details was WINIPCFG.EXE.

5

How would I check whether the adapter is set to DHCP?

6
  1. Right click on “My Network Places” icon on your desktop or go to the “Start Menu”, select “Control Panel”, then select “Network Connections”
  2. Within the “Network Connection” window, double click on “Local Network Connection”
  3. Select “Propeties”
  4. Select “Internet Protocol (TCP/IP)” within the connection items
  5. Click on the “Properties” button.
  6. Under the General tab, un-select “Obtain IP address automatically” and “Obtain DNS server address automatically”
    If you have a problem with your ISP’s DNS server then it’s probably possible to find a free, slow one on the 'net somewhere.
7

Is this a reply to my previous post, or a seperate suggestion?

In any case, your instructions don’t seem to match up with what I’ve got on my computer. If I open Network from the Control panel (There is no Network Connection option listed), I get the following screen shown on the following page:
http://www.geocities.com/bronzefinger2/troubleshooting.html. Is this what I want?