OT – Why has desktop and router stopped talking????

Much blue language in the household as I try to re-establish our net connection.

Router is working fine – laptop currently connected via wifi at the mo.

However, desktop has dropped connection to the router. No comms with the router at all. Ethernet port on router shows green led, although ethernet port on back of PC is flashing amber.

Router is Netgear DGN 2000. Running XP Pro, hardware resources for ethernet adapter suggest it's working ok, but I'm tearing my hair out, especially as the desktop is the main "work" machine for when mrs rkk01 is working at home.

Any ideas appreciated

Try getting the laptop working over the wired connection, that'll tell you whether it's an issue with the PC or the router.

Probably stating the obvious but, rebooted the router?

Yes, rebooted router and PC. Have been trying various system restore points in case windows updates had fouled something up.

Tried different ethernet ports on the router as well. Will try the laptop on a wired connection.

Laptop works fine on wired connection (with wifi turned off)…
Can log into router control page and to STW…..

Its not unusual for these Router's to stop working. I have had problems with some that have the Internet light on and won't connect and some that can connect wirelessly and not wired.

Firstly, I would reset it (hold both buttons on the side) and reconfigure. If that fails then get it replaced under warranty!

Different cable?

Sounds like it's the ethernet card on the PC. Either it's bust or the drivers/software are screwed (assuming you've tried a different cable).

Quick fix? You could get a USB wireless dongle for a few quid, or even a new ethernet card for probably less. You need to get the device connected though to help you resolve the original issue.

I'd uninstall the ethernet card drivers and then let it find the card again, see if that helps but it may need an internet connection to get them again, catch 22.

Thanks all for input. I'm not an IT techie, but have built my own PCs over the last 10-15 years or so.

Tried all the different LAN ports on the router with the desktop – PC doesn't see router.

Tried LAN ports directly to the laptop and it works fine.
Router to net is fine.
Router to lapto via LAN is fine
Router to laptop via wifi is fine
Router to PC is fubared – including with different Cat 5 cables.

Ethernet port is onboard to M/B. Reinstalled ethernet port drivers, although there were no errors showing in hardware manager.

My conclusion – either IP table on PC has got totally screwed. Tried to manually set, which resluted in being able to ping the router IP, but not able to log in to the router control page IP or internet.

-or, ethernet card / port is dead / dying.

As someone suggested above, think of a PCi ethernet LAN card or a wifi card…

I'd uninstall the ethernet card drivers and then let it find the card again, see if that helps but it may need an internet connection to get them again, catch 22.

Hence me tearing clumps of hair out last night!!!!!!! 👿
Netgear manual also offers advice on detailed network settings setup – via a flaming link to their website

Does seem iffy, to be able to ping but not find the main page though, that's pretty odd. One suggests comms is active, the other suggests not.

If you set an IP address manually, with subnet, default gateway and DNS (from router summary page) then strange that you could ping it but not access summary page/Internet. This either works or doesn't and you would not get just the ability to ping. I would double check all LAN settings again that you have entered manually again and retry!

Weird that ping works but login doesn't (assuming they are both done on the same IP address and not via a name).

Any software firewalls running?
Does your hosts file have sensible content?

When I set the IP manually I used the router control page IP. Is this correct? or do I need the ADSL port IP or PC IP??

Other IP data – subnet, gateway DNS etc were as taken from the router page accessed from my laptop.

When I did this manually I got a consitency errors between the PC IP (assigned as 195.xxxetc and router IP 192.xxx etc) and gateway IPs.

Used to automatically assign IPs ok, but those settings no longer seem to work

GrahamS weird indeed.

Router login page was same IP as I set manually (and then couldn't access via IE) but managed to succesfully ping via the run command.

Presume thats a typo and you're not running on different IP ranges?

If the router's IP is 192.168.0.1 (default gateway) then PC should be 192.168.0.xx (I would use 99). This should work and not cause consistency errors.

Router login page was same IP as I set manually (and then couldn't access via IE) but managed to succesfully ping via the run command.

You're setting a different IP address on the PC than is on the router, yes? And in the same range?

Check the speed and duplex of the NIC. Either both sides (router and NIC) need to be set to 'auto', or both need to be hard-set manually. If you've got one side on auto and not the other, you can get weird symptoms where it connects at 10/half or not at all. This could also be consistent with the lights you're seeing on the NIC.

I wouldn't bother with manually setting IPs etc – you're just muddying the waters there. DHCP should work, and if you start hacking about with workarounds you're just making the root cause harder to find.

Failing that, a replacement NIC will cost buttons.

Set the PC to automatically get IP from router, open a command window and type "ipconfig /flushdns" then restart the pc and see if that cures the issue.
Just a note also from your final point above, if the pc is a 195. address and the router is a 192. address I dont think that will work. The PC has to be on the 192. network to comm with the router.

You can also add "ipconfig /renew" to the list of things to try…

I didn't set the PC 195. range IP…. It arrived at that on its own..!

How do I set the PC IP?? Is it the PC IP that I set manually in the IP / Sub mask / DNS settings page? I think I entered the router IP in this dialogue box 😕

Flushdns isn't going to affect your ability to connect to hosts by IP address.

ipconfig /renew isn't a bad idea, but you'll probably need to do ipconfig /release first, and it'll only work if you've got your IP settings on automatic rather than manually entered.

The other thing I was wondering was, are we sure this is a network issue? Are you getting any other symptoms that might point towards some form of malware infection which has scuppered the connection? I'd quite like to rule that out I reckon.

How do I set the PC IP?

Don't, leave it on Auto.

A 195 address occurs when it cannot get a correct address using DHCP/auto.

Go into the TCP/IP properties for the adapter and set the IP manually from there!

On auto the PC currently defaults to a 165… IP address – which it never used to.

The Netgear manual states that "recent" Windows updates have resulted in this setting when the PC can't see a router to get an automatically assigned IP. The auto IP setting deffo isn't working.

Will run a full malware scan tonight – but lack of internet connection means that my malware database is out of date until I get reconnected 😡

Also can't get Windows automatic updates, which given the PC was 3% through one of those when it fell over might be quite useful…

Cheers to all the STW IT support desk anyway 🙂

A few ideas to try there. I think I'll hold off the new ethernet card for the moment.

A 195 address occurs when it cannot get a correct address using DHCP/auto.

Go into the TCP/IP properties for the adapter and set the IP manually from there!

With all due respect, this is wrong.

Without a reachable DHCP server, Windows will use APIPA to assign a 169.254.y.z address. This what we in the industry call "making things up as it goes along" and about the only use I've ever found for it is as a diagnostic step; to wit, if you see a 169.254 address, you know categorically that you're looking at an interface which is configured to receive DHCP requests and isn't currently getting them.

It shouldn't be a 165 or a 195 address, ever. These are both public IP addresses, and would raise concerns if that's anything other than a typo.

Will run a full malware scan tonight

http://malwarebytes.org/ comes Cougar-recommended as a good starting point.

Hi Cougar,

I would agree with you but I have seen a number of routers which do exactly this but it is usually wireless instead of wired, in all cases the address has been 169.xxx.xxx.xxx. In 99% of cases I have just set the IP manually and left it like this. In the rest of the cases I have had the router replaced under warranty. I would agree therefore that the 195 was a typo. 😉

Without a reachable DHCP server, Windows will use APIPA to assign a 169.254.y.z address. This what we in the industry call "making things up as it goes along" and about the only use I've ever found for it is as a diagnostic step; to wit, if you see a 169.254 address, you know categorically that you're looking at an interface which is configured to receive DHCP requests and isn't currently getting them.

It shouldn't be a 165 or a 195 address, ever. These are both public IP addresses, and would raise concerns if that's anything other than a typo.

Aye, the 165.xxx was a typo – set to auto IP/TCP the PC defaults to 169.254.y.z because it can't get an IP from the router.

the 195.xxx definately wasn't a typo – the diagnostics window highlighted it as a conflict with the 192 of the router…

Shakey / Rkk01

Whilst it might be possible to get it working by bypassing DHCP and assigning a static address manually, I disagree that it's a good first step in troubleshooting this. I'd suggest at least attempting to fix the problem before we look at bodges.

Apart from anything else, you're changing from a known good configuration to something that might or might not be right. Even if we subsequently fix the issue (eg, it turns out to be a malware infection), we might still have a connection failure only it's now -caused- by a misconfiguration we've accidentally just introduced.

If all else fails then yeah, before we run out and buy a new card it's probably worth setting it up manually. But I'd suggest that's a last-ditch course of action.

the 195.xxx definately wasn't a typo – the diagnostics window highlighted it as a conflict with the 192 of the router…

I'd have liked to have seen what the full address was, if this was the case.

I presumed that the 'conflict' would have occurred when you manually set your PC's IP to be the same address as the one in use by your router (usually 192.168.0.1 or similar) – IP addresses have to be unique identifiers. Is this not the case?

If you had duplicated IPs, that would also explain this:

Tried to manually set, which resluted in being able to ping the router IP, but not able to log in to the router control page IP or internet.

Cougar – Agreed, I'd much rather get the thing working on the original auto settings.

Will try the malware scan and cmd ipconfig suggestions, to see if that works, but at the mo the auto settings just generate the 169.254 address. Netgear have useful stuff on their site in this respect.

Not too keen on resetting the router just yet as it is working fine with the laptop, and is therefore my only means of home access to the internet…

Cougar you are quite right – I had entered the router IP of 192.168.0.1 instead of the computer IP – as suggested 192.168.0.xx, which I will try with DHCP enabled

(-:

The ipconfig release & renew essentially just says "go and get an IP address". It won't fix anything, but it will tell it to try again after an outage or making other changes.

If you're going to hard-reset the router, I'm not familiar with that specific model but on every Netgear I've come across there's an option to export or restore a config file. I'd save the config before resetting it, then you can reload it afterwards. You will of course need a working wired connection to do this.

My gut feeling at this stage is that the malware scan is going to find something. Either way, I'm pretty confident that it's not a router fault.

as suggested 192.168.0.xx, which I will try with DHCP enabled

Unless I've misunderstood you here, this is mutually exclusive – either you're setting the IP address manually, or you're setting it to receive an address automatically via DHCP. You can't do both at once.

Has a Windows Update sneaked in whilst you're not looking? Automatic Updates set on?

I know Vista's DHCP client daemon was fubar'd with a range of older routers – setting a static was the only way to get it to work. If this is the case for you you'll need to either leave it static (simplest and cheapest), roll back the update that has caused this (something MUST have changed) or replace the router (yuk).

OP is using XP Pro, not Vista. I'm not aware of any such issues with XP (could be wrong though).

The Vista issue you're referring to, is it this?

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/928233

Yes, running XP Pro SP3.

Have rolled back to a restore point that I know is good – doesn't make any difference.

I'm going to try and reset the ipconfig settings to try and get the system to get auto IP setup working again.

If that fails I'll try and get manual settings that work for now to allow me to update my virus database and windows updates – then once I've got a working connection go back and find the underlying cause.

Cougar – Member
ipconfig /renew isn't a bad idea, but you'll probably need to do ipconfig /release first…

Never knew that bit, cheers 🙂