Help, help, help! I can’t access the internet anymore and that messes with my head and troubles me greatly. (It does, really. That troubles me as well, but nevermind. On to the problem in question):
What happened is the following (I hope I can describe what ails my computer, I actually have no idea what exactly I am doing, I tried everything that I found or was explained but nothing worked):
I am using a router to connect my Win XP laptop to my LAN. The router is acting as a DHCP server and is supposed to assign an IP adress to the laptop. So far everything worked properly. Then I left my laptop on overnight (it wasn’t doing anything, it was just on) and in the morning I couldn’t access the internet anymore. The laptop claims it can’t find my router anymore.
Hence, it just assigns a bogus IP adress which of course doesn’t help anything.
I’ve tried the following:
reboot the laptop (nothing changes)
reboot the router (which works as my roommate can access the internet)
unplug the cable (which is also functional, I tried it on my roommate’s computer)
manually enter the router’s IP adress (can’t find DHCP server, it says)
ping the router (still can’t find the DHCP server)
checked for sneaky dial-up connections that mess up my perfect DSL (there are none)
I am at my wit’s end (which wasn’t that far to begin with) and am suspecting it might be a hardware problem. But I’m still hoping it isn’t. Do you know anything I haven’t tried yet? Help, or I’ll have to continue using my roommate’s MAC which drives me nuts (sorry, MAC users, I know, this wouldn’t have happened if I had used one of those wonderful contraptions but I am just not used to the frigging apple key )!
Do as Gyan9 says, which means you need to manually set your PC at a static address on your router’s LAN. See if you can ping it. See if you can configure it. See if you can see your roommate’s computer. See if you get to the internet.
In fact, unless your computer is a laptop and accesses multiple LANs in your life, you may want to get rid of DHCP and use static addresses. That’s one potential issue out of the way.
I don’t understand your setup. It seems like you are getting ADSL from an ISP. So, why do you have your own DHCP? What you need to to is to set your router as a DHCP client, and give your notebook a fixed private IP address that gets NAT’ed to the router’s IP.
I have to point out that I only have a vague idea what I am doing here, but I am trying my best. I can open the command window and try to ping things and I know where to change my LAN settings but that’s about it.
I have no idea why the router is set up this way, my brother did that, but so far I haven’t had any problems with it. My brother, by the way, claims not to know why the laptop doesn’t work (I guess he just set things up but really has no idea why). I called him and he said the router had a fixed IP address which was 192.168.123.1 so I manually configured the LAN to that address. (On the computer, not on the router) Now if I ping that I do get an answer, but I still cannot access the internet or even the router’s configuration.
Gyan9 (I can’t code properly, since I can’t find square brackets on the Mac, I feel like a total loser), is the DHCP dialogue the window that’s supposed to open when I try to access the router (on the aforementioned address) over the browser? I only get an error message if I try that.
I can’t access the address (nor 192.168.0.1) with the MAC browser either. If I try to ping anything else it also doesn’t work. And I can’t work out how to reach the router from this computer as I have no idea how a MAC works and neither has my roommate, she just bought it because it looked so stylish.
Otherwise I don’t know how to set the router to anything because I can’t access its settings…
The router is there to act as a firewall, and to allow more than X connections to the 'net, where X = however many IPs the ISP is willing to give you. DHCP is good. DHCP allows you to log on to many networks with no network munging. DHCP is not working for you, but it’s looking like your laptop is at fault.
If you know someone else with a router, you could try hooking the laptop up there, just as a furthur troubleshooting step. Unlikely to help though.
What brand of router is this, BTW? It might help in fixing what’s wrong.
Your router has a web-based interface, which you can mess around with if you can find it. If the Mac is working, stick “http://192.168.123.1” in the URL bar, and you should be able to see it yourself. You sound unsure of whether this is the actual IP; the Mac will call this the “gateway” wherever Macs happen to keep their network settings. (I know about as much about Macs as you do). Gyan9 wants you to check out the DHCP menu, and make sure there’s nothing odd there. Perhaps someone locked out your network card address (media access control address, your network card has one) as a joke… if your roommate has a Mac though, it seems unlikely.
The router is there to act as a firewall, and to allow more than X connections to the 'net, where X = however many IPs the ISP is willing to give you. DHCP is good. DHCP allows you to log on to many networks with no network munging. DHCP is not working for you, but it’s looking like your laptop is at fault.
If you know someone else with a router, you could try hooking the laptop up there, just as a furthur troubleshooting step. Unlikely to help though.
What brand of router is this, BTW? It might help in fixing what’s wrong.
Your router has a web-based interface, which you can mess around with if you can find it. If the Mac is working, stick “http://192.168.123.1” in the URL bar, and you should be able to see it yourself. You sound unsure of whether this is the actual IP; the Mac will call this the “gateway” wherever Macs happen to keep their network settings. (I know about as much about Macs as you do). Gyan9 wants you to check out the DHCP menu, and make sure there’s nothing odd there. Perhaps someone locked out your network card address (media access control address, your network card has one) as a joke… if your roommate has a Mac though, it seems unlikely.
I’m starting to lean towards the “there’s something wrong with the laptop” option myself. I managed to hook up my old desktop to the router (Mac Schmac) and that allowed me to access the router setup page, where everything seems fine. I can even see the laptop and its assigned IP. Tried to manually assign that to the laptop, but it still can’t find the router (which is a SMC router, BTW).
DHCP menu seems fine - I think I’ll try setting up the laptop again and if that doesn’t work I’ll have to send it in to get it fixed. But since I can now at least access the internet via this trusty machine (even if it features a really old and cranky hamster), I have some peace of mind.
The setup is messed up. The router should be a DHCP client, unless your ISP actually assigned a fixed IP for you. I seriously doubt that for normal DSL connection, though.
Anyway, setup the router to receive DHCP from the ISP’s server, and put in fixed IP for your computers. NAT the local computers to the router’s IP number.
Actually, what I’d try is the opposite. Set the notebook system’s IP address to the same one as the router, disconnect the router and connect the notebook system directly to the DSL modem. You’ll also need to set the subnet mask, gateway and DNS servers to the ones assigned to the router.
Once you do that, can you get to the internet? If so, you know that the notebook system has a working network card. Then reconnect the router, set up the notebook system for DHCP again and try again. Also, have you tried a different switch port on the router? Have you tried a different network cable?
Along with the other suggestions you could try this:
start–>run–> Wntipcfg.exe
and release/renew the IP address… this should grab a new address from your router.
this does the same thing as the old IPCONFIG command in DOS
Don’t know if it will work… but it shouldn’t hurt either. Just a thought.
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