Network Question

M

mgookin

At friend's restaurant where he has a WiFi.

Everything on it works great (many systems/ credit card devices/ etc.) Router is Linksys and about 4 mos old.

Then main pc in his office would lag bigtime when going online. Eventually over about 3 days it died. Looking as his usb WiFi device it looks like it got bumped under the desk.

So I come in with a spool of cable and build a 150' long ethernet cable for him. I can only get about 1-10 kbps datarate out of this thing. So I move his workstation up to the router and plug it into a 10' long ethernet cable that I know is good. Now I have no datarate at all. Can't connect with either USB or Ethernet.

What's goign on here?
What else in a pc is dependent here?

TIA!
 
Can you plug in another laptop computer and demonstrate that the wiring and network connections are working? If another computer works on that network cable then the suspect computer is a likely source of trouble.
 
yeah, you need to isolate the problem by checking with another computer, usb cable, usb adaptor, network cables, etc. check everything till it works. then you've found the problem.

the distance shouldn't be a problem.. i think ethernet works well to 100m.
 
Here I am on my laptop plugged into the 10' ethernet cable and it's working fine. I'm literally 3' from the router. I also ran a WiFi connection from my laptop to the router for the past 1.5 days and it works great as well.

I'm convinced that USB WiFi device is fried. The green light on it won't come on no matter what system I plug it into and no system recognizes it.

Just seems odd that both a USB Wireless device and an onboard ethernet port would both die like this. I guess the next step is to rip a 10/100 card out of another pc and put it in the workstation we're trying to get online. I'll have to run down the street and canablize a system to do this.



Unless anyone has a better idea?
 
Went and got two NIC cards.

Install new nic and device manager sees it fine, good driver, blah blah blah

Connect ethernet cable and no connectivity. Open Control Panel and tell it to Repair the Connection. Message "Windows could not finsih repairing the problem because the follwing action cannot be completed: Renewing your IP address" Same message I have been getting for 2 days.

What in a pc has to do with this other then NIC?
USB WiFi does not work
Onboard mobo Ethernet does not work
10/100 NIC does not work.
Yet device manager has no problems with any of these items.

Yet I can take the ethernet cable and stick it in the ethernet port on this laptop and it works fine.

Anyone know what to do here?
 
Check the IP address on the PC to be certain that it is not something like 169.x.x.x, which is a default IP address that Windows assigns if it does not acquire an IP address from the router (presuming DHCP at the router is turned on).

Another thing to try would be resetting/rebooting the router and cable/DSL modem. I ran into a similar problem recently. The wired PC would not connect or connected at a very slow speed. Almost by accident, I turned off the powerblock for the modem & router. Turned them back and and voila, back in business. JD
 
Try going to DOS command line and typing "ipconfig /renew" without quotes.

Also make sure DHCP is enabled under Administrative Tools -> Services on the computer.
 
Thanks everyone for the helpful info.

I'll be down there tonight for a party and I'll try these new suggestions. I'll let you know how it goes.

Thanks again.
 
I tried that stuff (not the os rein though) to no avail. I did find online where Linksys has some good "how to fix a fucked up router situation" tutorials. I'll run through that later today during a football game.

I also discovered that the router is not his. Apparently Embarq brought it when his newest credit card machine arrived. We have a call into them. I guess Monday they'll show up.

If none of that works he can call the local $50 flat rate tech repair service and let them fight that bastard.

Thanks again to everone. I'll let you know what it was when we gitter done.
 
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