My router won't get past 192.168.1.1

Factual Questions
1

So here I am in a new apartment, yay. I finish getting everything ready and buy a router and modem identical to the ones I had at home (I moved out of my mom’s so I couldn’t take it because she doesn’t know how to set it up).

Anyway, I follow the setup process for the modem (hint: click “next”), call my cable company with my MAC address and everything works fine. Great! Time to connect my router for my myriad game systems and laptop. I go through the setup process, to the letter. It launches the router config page as part of the setup, routersetup.com (or something, I don’t really care, the DNS just directs you to 192.168.1.1 anyway). Wait, whaddya mean you “can’t load it.” You can’t load the internal page? I look down “Local only” is what my connection icon says. Okay, I guess, it makes little sense that being internet connected would matter to connect to the router but MAYBE that’s my problem.

I go through one thousand eleven solutions and finally it says “local and internet.” Gre… wait I still can’t get to my router page. Well, okay I’ll worry about security and port forwading a little bit. Maybe google even has some info. www.google.com. Wait… not a valid address (my bar changes to http:///)? Odd, okay let’s try pinging. I ping 192.168.1.1, okay, <2 ms response, fair enough, seems a tiny bit slow, but hey. I ping Google, what the frick does it say next to its address?
Google.com [192.168.1.1]. Okay, so it’s STUCK IN MY GATEWAY. I can’t connect to Yahoo, or Vista sidebar services either (figures of course).

Want your mind blown? One, lone internet based app worked perfectly. Steam, via steam I was actually IMing a friend for a little, nothing else, no web pages, not the routers goddamn internal page, not any other web based application worked.

I unplugged my router and went back to the modem alone to be sure, sure enough, I’m connected.

I have a Netgear WPN824v3 (a speed boosted wireless G router), same model I have at home. Any ideas at all? Or is it just defective? Depending on the answers I get (or don’t) I may just return it and get a new one.

2

You probably need to enable DHCP on your PC and clone your MAC address from your PC to the Router.

Start with your PC turned off. Hook it up to the router (not connected to the cable modem). Power the the router on, then the PC. Once the PC is on, check your IP address (start a cmd prompt, use ipconfig /all). If you don’t have an IP address in the 192.168.1.x range, go to network settings and ensure that you have turned on Automatic Configuration for the IP setup (this enables DHCP).

Once you have got a DHCP address from the router, try connecting to the admin page. If you still cannot get to 192.168.1.1, check that you do not have a proxy server setup in your browser.

Once you have a connection to your router, set it up with the MAC address you gave to the Cable people, and then connect the router to your cable modem and reboot everything. Your PC should still have a 192.168.1.x address from the router and the Router will have an external address from the cable modem.

Good luck

Si

3

Most cable companies don’t care about your MAC. They will only register one MAC at a time though.

In these cases, I’d recomment unplugging your modem for a bit, then turning on your modem, router, and PC (in that order) and see if the situation improves. I can’t conceive of a situation where your router’s configuration page would be inaccessible from a DHCPd internal address.

4

Which MAC address did you register? That of your PC or that of your router? Have you done an IPCONFIG release / renew on your PC?

BTW try browsing by IP address - http://192.168.1.1

5

This sounds like it’s a DNS problem at your end, and this application caches the IP address it needs so it only goes through DNS once. (Or it has a hard-coded IP address and doesn’t need DNS at all.)

Try http://64.233.187.99/ to get to Google. If it works but you can’t leave Google, it’s DNS. I think.

6

You might want to try 192.168.0.1.

7

I’ve tried most lows in the 192.168.x.x range, but either way nothin works.

I registered the MAC of the cable modem actually.

I tried browsing 192 etc by IP, it says “address not available” and changes it to “http:///”

First thing I attempted, IME 90% of the time it’s an issue that can be solved by a good ol’ hardware reset like that so I’ve done that numerous times.

After I try Si’s solution, I’ll attempt this and report back. (Actually I would’ve done this earlier if I would have known any specific external IPs ahead of time).

Thanks everyone! I’ll work on this in a few hours after I pick up my desk later.

8

Don’t know if it will help, but there is a firmware update available you might want to try.

9

When I had a very similar problem last week, a router hardware reset followed by cloning my PC’s MAC address to the router fixed me right up. I have since updated my router’s firmware (with my fingers crossed the whole time) and so far, so good. :slight_smile:

10

Another vote for it being a DNS issue. Possibly coupled with having more than one DHCP server online, the cable modem and the router.

Disconnect the modem from the router
Do a hardware reset on the router
reboot the PC
see if you can get to 192.168.1.1 now

Also check your network settings to make sure you don’t have any static settings in the TCP/IP configuration.

I once had to let a router and modem set up connected together for a day one time before they decided they liked each other enough to play well together. Never did figure out what that was about.

11

Seems like it is indeed a DNS issue, I’ve tried hardware resets, of all flavors, modem connected, just router etc. I’ve also done an ipconfig /flushdns and ipconfig /registerdns.

I’d like to do a firmware update, but it’s an img file that is installed by going into the settings. I cannot get to the the settings login for the router. No matter what I do it says the connection times out. It’s is also how I clone the MAC on this router (I go in and use a certain setting), but I don’t think that’s the issue.

I can get to google by going direct IP, and cannot follow links, confirming the DNS error idea.

Additional info:
DHCP is working fine/on. The gateway IP is smack dab 192.168.1.1. I’m starting to wonder if its just a lemon, most google solutions I’ve found involve getting into the router settings, which as I’ve stated is impossible. I’ve even tried tricking the DNS and DHCP into resetting by going into my connection settings and setting them to use generic static addresses that don’t exist and then applying and going back and setting it to automatic (sometimes it works). ipconfig release/renews also do nothing.

So, my objectives seem to be:
get the router login screen to appear
figure out how to get to the actual internet without using direct IPs.

12

ok, check c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\localhost to see if there are static entries in there screwing things up. You may have used an ad-blocker that uses this to prevent some local hacks.

Do you have a firewall installed? Maybe disable that initially, too.

With the router installed and running, do an ipconfig /all and tell us what your DNS entries are. It should be 192.168.1.1 - the gateway address, or maybe it will be the DNS server of your ISP.

You could also try setting your pc to use the setings from OpenDNS.org rather than getting them from DHCP

Finally, you could have some malware that interferes with DNS behaviour. Use something like Ad-Aware to check.

Si

13

If you’re running windows ME, 2000 or Xp, you can fix a wide range of TCP/IP & DNS problems on the PC by going to the device manager, uninstalling the NIC & rebooting. That will force windows to rebuild the network connection & remove any proxy settings, etc that could be in your way.
Please post the solution when you get this resolved!

14

Last Wednesday morning arrived and we had no internet action.

Rebooted several times and then called the ISP who ran their over-the-phone checks. “Not us” they declared so we checked all of the wiring to make sure baby or dog didn’t somehow undo a vital component. Went a full day trying other techniques and hoping that the computer magically healed itself. Sought advice from a friend in the know who suggested other equally ineffective ides.

On Day Three, called ISP again and they walked us through another series of checks and finally said they received a memo saying that with a new Windows XP update -one that no one bothered to tell anyone about?- some users would have to uninstall their third party firewall / anti-virus program in order for the new system to take.

We did this and POOF! internet connectivity restored.

15

This very thing happened to me. On my home PC, I use ZoneAlarm (overkill with the router firewall, I know, but I want an extra layer that keeps, ahem, other family members from mistakenly installing malware), and it stopped reaching the internet. Other devices connected to the router, such as my Dish Network box and Xbox 360, had no trouble getting out, though. So, I checked the ZoneAlarm log, and it was blocking everything that tried to go out. I disabled ZoneAlarm and did some Google searching, and I found what you did: the latest Windows security update changed something about the way Windows sends DNS queries, or something, and some firewall software doesn’t like it, but if you upgrade to the latest ZoneAlarm, we’ve fixed the problem. Did that, and all was well again. I just didn’t make the mental connection with this thread, for some reason. So, Jragon, if you’re running a non-Microsoft firewall on the PC, disable it and see how it all goes.

16

It works! Apparently something deleted localhost. I created the file and just threw in



127.0.0.1 localhost
::1       localhost

which I think are the default settings.

My only issue now is my computer insists my connection is “local only” even though I am indeed on the internet now, but I figure a reboot should fix that.

Thanks everyone.