VISTA Networking OK - no internet though

[Mainframeguy]

Last Thursday I was on site volunteering at a charity wanting some IT help. They were using a VISTA machine in lieu of a server, sharing the hard drive. All machines were networked OK with fixed IP addresses. The rest of the machines were a mix of XP Pro and Home (they were using workgroups). I did not have access to the router config.

The VISTA box being shared until they get a server was networked fine, obviously, but had no internet access. I suspected DNS, but other machines had no problems. So far as I could see the TCP/IP setting matched those in use by other machines, fixed IP addie, gateway specified as router, DNS as router. I tried changing the IP address and added an opendns addie for secondary, without success. Checked it was not a firewall issue and even tried another browser, no joy.

I thought I would post here because I'm relatively new to VISTA networking and you guys may have some good ideas - or at very least input to things to test when I am next on site tomorrow. I hope I tried to ping outside network from the machine, but honestly I cannot remember dead.

There must be very common reasons for internet to drop from a vista box which stays networked... unfortunately I do not know them! So - look forward to hearing.... I'll be there tomorrow and will post back as soon as it is resolved (or not!).

 

[LordOfLA]

vista networking is the same as XP networking for the most part, there's just one extra step to get there. The rest was "under the hood" changes.

 

[Mainframeguy]

yes - I thought it was pretty much that way - any comments on networking yes and internet no though? This must be a commonplace, with likely "usual suspects" and I thought I might get a hint or two?

 

[LeeJend]

Router config. It may have some of the IP's blocked for security reasons.

If you can't get router access try swapping the VISTA machines IP to the IP of one of the PC's that can connect. If it works they have the access blocked in the router.

 

[Mainframeguy]

Router config. It may have some of the IP's blocked for security reasons.

If you can't get router access try swapping the VISTA machines IP to the IP of one of the PC's that can connect. If it works they have the access blocked in the router.

this was my first thought - good someone agrees with me! I think I said the previous volunteer configured the router and left no access... It's a thompson speedtouch - anyone know the defaults for that? I tried admin and variations with no joy. Then I went on to change the IP of the problem machine with no joy All that seemed to do was remove their shared drive access, which I hope has come back after I changed it back and they rebooted (I had to leave before that! But I'll be back there in a couple of hours....)

PS I'm reluctant to do a factory reset to the speedtouch, I may not have the ISP access details! :dead:

 

[LordOfLA]

its usuallly Administrator/<blank> atleast it is on mine, and its only reachable on 192.168.1.254 (at least this is the case with the speedtouch I was given by Be broadband which I have running in bridge mode.

 

[Mainframeguy]

thanks lord - will try - am on site now.... have plugged laptop into another port and online access immediate and no problem.

Problem VISTA machine can ping addresses outside, as I thought. Makes me think problems is DNS, but I added secondary opendns addie to no avail. Anyone else have any ideas?

 

[Mainframeguy]

its usuallly Administrator/<blank> ...

no go , thanks though.

Have fixed browsing option - needed proxy swerver setting in browser, somehow they had been lost :dead:

 

[Electronic Punk]

You had to enter a proxy server on a small network connected to the internet via router? :s

 

[Mainframeguy]

yip - it is mad - and add to that I have no router config access! I foresee a hard reset ahead.... might spec them with a new router, but it just feels wrong that they have to spend money unecessarily when they are a charity.

[edit] there's something odd though - I only had to do this to the VISTA box to restore internet,.... and if I recollect properly I coudl then remove it and set it to automatic config under LAN settings for connection - I had to do the same to a FFox browser to make that work - so this is not router - this is browser.... [/edit]