Internet Problem

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Stargazer858

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Mar 17, 2004
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A friend of mine bought an IBM Thinkpad, I assume by mistake. He had no problems with it until about the 2nd month of use, that is when he could not access the internet via the college network. So he sent it back to big Blue, they replaced the motherboard along with some other components. When he got it back he still could not connect. Today he got it back for the third time...it still does not work. Also (I live next door to him) he can not connect to my wireless router, but he can detect it.

Specs:

Win XP Pro SP2
Intel Pentium M 1500MHz
248MB ram
the rest can be found here:

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?lndocid=MIGR-54876

They sent it back this time saying the os needed to be reinstalled, but could not due it b/c they did not have permision. I can understand that they did not want to reformat without telling him, but even here in PA we have something called the phone (it is used to contact people). At any rate does someone have an idea of what might be wrong, or does the os need to be reinstalled? Thanks for the help, hope I posted in the right place.
 
Stargazer858 said:
A friend of mine bought an IBM Thinkpad, I assume by mistake. He had no problems with it until about the 2nd month of use, that is when he could not access the internet via the college network. So he sent it back to big Blue, they replaced the motherboard along with some other components. When he got it back he still could not connect. Today he got it back for the third time...it still does not work. Also (I live next door to him) he can not connect to my wireless router, but he can detect it.

Specs:

Win XP Pro SP2
Intel Pentium M 1500MHz
248MB ram
the rest can be found here:

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?lndocid=MIGR-54876

They sent it back this time saying the os needed to be reinstalled, but could not due it b/c they did not have permision. I can understand that they did not want to reformat without telling him, but even here in PA we have something called the phone (it is used to contact people). At any rate does someone have an idea of what might be wrong, or does the os need to be reinstalled? Thanks for the help, hope I posted in the right place.
Click to expand...


Check his network connections and make sure its set to automatically assign ip. If the DHCP on your router is sending him an IP, it should connect.

go to command prompt and type in ipconfig

If his ip is 169.254.XXX.XXX it is not being assigned an ip. If it has an ip of 192.168.XXX.XXX then it is.

then type in the prompt, ipconfig /release
then ipconfig /renew

That will ask the DHCP for an ip and if one cant be given, it'll assign a 169.254 in which case it wont connect. I'd recommend reinstalling the network card drivers. Also, the college may have had some sort of WEP setup. Try and check to see if his WEP is either disabled or set correctly. Either way I'd still recommend reinstalling drivers.
 
Where in PA?

There could be many things causing the problem of not connecting to the college network. It could be a bad wall jack, bad cable, bad network port on the laptop. It could be the NIC on the laptop isn't installed correctly in windows. It could be the college uses some sort of network configuration that he's not setting up. You didn't post anything that you or he did in terms of troubleshooting, so it's hard for us to know where to start. I find it hard to believe anyone would send a laptop back without troubleshooting it, but anything's possible I guess.

Second thing has some of the same answers. We have no idea how your router is configured, so we have no idea what might be the problem.
 
Lycoming College. Also he took his computer to a man that works in our IT deprtment (works on computerd on the side), and he could not figure out what was wrong. In addition he also took it to the IT department are they also could not find the problem.

When I do ipcomfig /all, it says that "media disconnected" and does not give an ip address.

Thanks.
 
Well, now you know the problem, now you just need to find out what is causing it.

Can you try testing the internet connection by connecting it with a Wired cable into the wireless router?

If this does not work, after doing a "repair connection" under the "Local area network" connection in your "network connections" (found in control panle), then right click my computer > properities > hardware > device manager
Does anything have a little yellow circle next to the icon? This usually tells you that hardware is not set up correctly.

If all the hardware seems to be fine, goto control panle > then goto network connections. right click "Local area network", and click properities. Select TCP/IP protocol and click the properties button. Make sure "Obtain an IP address automatically" is selected.
Obviously, make sure the wireless router is not blocking your computer's ip, or filtering it somehow. You might want to test to make sure the windows fire wall is not causing the problem.

Perhaps its a broken wireless card (if it has one). especially if it works fine with a wired cable. I'm not sure what else there is really.

~hope this helps

Edit: From the sounds of the error message, it is not able to connected to the school's internet because there is a problem with the "media" being disconnected, so somehow its not getting a signal... whether its because its a bad wireless card.... or the router is blocking access to the computer or not giving out an IP address.
 
Ok reinstalled the drivers, and followed towert7's directions. Used eathernet cable to connect,but now when I try and repair the connection it says:"can't renew ip address." Then it goes on to say that it did not assign a network address.

Thanks.
 
If you do an ipconfig /renew in a command window, what's the error message?
(Start->run, "cmd", "ipconfig /renew", enter)

And does it time out, or immideately give an error?
 
Are you sure the ethernet jack on the wall your using is working properly? It sounds like no signal is even getting to the laptop.
 
The computer has been tested using the eathernet jack in his room and mine, and also in the rear of the router. When I do a ipconfig /renew, it says that the DHCP server could not be reacher and the operation has timed out. The Device Manager shows everything is working properly, but the LAN icon in lower right corner of the screen says "limited or no connectivity" yet it is showing a speed of 10 Mbps.

Thanks.
 
Lets see, we have multiple NICs (LAN/WAN) and multiple connection points (LAN/WAN) and both cannot get an IP.

The more simple answer is that it's not a problem with either the drivers or the config since that would require both to be incorrect. The only single problem that would account for both would be something at a lower level like winsock.

Try running the winsock fix.

Other than that your looking at multiple issues or the same issue x2. Was this ever working at school? Anywere?
 
Yes his computr worked fine for about a month of being here, then one day it stopped working. Finished running winsock fix, it did not find any files to remove, but I restarted and now it says he' s connected, still at 10 Mpbs, but he still can' t connect to the intrnet (using IE or Mozilla). Also tried wireless and plugging it into the wall, the wireless does not work, but the LAN is connected at 10 Mbps.
 
Just for kicks, try manually setting the link speed to 10MBps/half-duplex . I know of at least one place that has limited the normal ports of their switches to that to reduce the load, and some network cards seem to have problems autodetecting this.

(Somewhere in the properties for your network card. It might be fastest to go Device Manager -> Network card -> properties. It's usually one of the options under the advanced-tab, IIRC.)
 
It sounds like eaither the hardware is messed up, or the software. Bus seeing as how it won't even work with the built in ethernet port..... chances are its software related.
(unless the college put a ban on your MAC address........ or something of that sort... which i don't think would be the case).

Have you fooled around with adding or configuring any antivirus, anti spyware, or firewall applications?

Also, just as a heads up, a good way to test for internet connectivity is to open up a command window start > run > type cmd
then type ping www.yahoo.com (or another website). if the ping is successful, then your connected to the internet.

Anyway, just for the fun of it, double check a few settings.
start > settings > controle panle > network connections > right click Local area network > click properities.
Click the TCP/IP protocol and click properities. Make sure obtain a IP automatically is selected, goto advanced.
Click the options tab, click properties and make sure no TCP/IP filtering is set up.

Other then that, im out of thoughts.

If using windows XP, do you have restore point before this problem occured? If so, and your willing to role back to those settings, you might want to give that a try.

~Hope this helps, and keep us posted.
 
When I do the ping test, it says host could not be found. I also rechecked the settings and they are all where they should be. Also the IT department has not yet started to block mac addresses (they are in the process of testing a program called Campus something or other, and this is in another hall and it just started on Monday). All firewalls are down, b/c he only has the Windows firewall and it is disabled. Someone told me that IBM computers come with a disk that has all of their drivers on it, although my friend does not have them here at college. Do you know if there is somewhere on the internet where I could find them, i.e. IBM's website (this suggestion came from the IT department).
 
Stargazer858 said:
When I do the ping test, it says host could not be found. I also rechecked the settings and they are all where they should be. Also the IT department has not yet started to block mac addresses (they are in the process of testing a program called Campus something or other, and this is in another hall and it just started on Monday). All firewalls are down, b/c he only has the Windows firewall and it is disabled. Someone told me that IBM computers come with a disk that has all of their drivers on it, although my friend does not have them here at college. Do you know if there is somewhere on the internet where I could find them, i.e. IBM's website (this suggestion came from the IT department).
Click to expand...
http://www.ibm.com/products/finder/us/en/finders?pg=ddfinder
 
Ok, tried the drivers from IBM's website. Did not work. So I gave the tech support a call, even got someone who spoke English (thats only because I hit the wrong number at one of the promts). I expressed my feelings of hatred twoard the ThinkPad, then the trooble shooting began. She told me that the computer had been tested, all three times that it was there, and they could use IE. So I asked what website did they goto, and I would give it a try. To my disapproval they did not have it listed. So I gave her the list of things I did, and I was put on hold. Told her that the wireless did not work and that we tried it in different rooms, drivers updated, ect. Then she said, "has the Ethernet cable been known to work." At that point I got mad and hung the phone up. I guess he will have to reformat the hard drive, which should notbe a problem once he gets his XP cd from home, since he only has some music and some other small files that can be transfered to cd.

Thanks for all the help!
 
Stargazer858 said:
Ok, tried the drivers from IBM's website. Did not work. So I gave the tech support a call, even got someone who spoke English (thats only because I hit the wrong number at one of the promts). I expressed my feelings of hatred twoard the ThinkPad, then the trooble shooting began. She told me that the computer had been tested, all three times that it was there, and they could use IE. So I asked what website did they goto, and I would give it a try. To my disapproval they did not have it listed. So I gave her the list of things I did, and I was put on hold. Told her that the wireless did not work and that we tried it in different rooms, drivers updated, ect. Then she said, "has the Ethernet cable been known to work." At that point I got mad and hung the phone up. I guess he will have to reformat the hard drive, which should notbe a problem once he gets his XP cd from home, since he only has some music and some other small files that can be transfered to cd.

Thanks for all the help!
Click to expand...

Sounds to me like your getting pissed off because they expected you to do normal troubleshooting, which you did not want to do. Sorry to sound like an ass, but if you don't have the knowledge or the patience for their tech support to help you, your pretty much shit out of luck. They get thousands of calls a day, so did you really expect them to know your problem personally? Any companie's tech support is going to start at the beginning. I've been reading through this thread, and it doesn't seem at any time, you really did any kind of troubleshooting.
 
I am mad, and I understand that the person I got on the phone only had bits of information to go by. I do not get mad at the people who work there, the only thing I was mad at, was the fact that they had the computer three times and claimed that it worked before they shipped it back (which it might have). As far as troubleshooting goes, if their is anything else that I could do that you could think of, please share.
 
Well, you mention it won't work by the wireless connection. How do you expect IBM to help with that, when they (or us for that matter) have no idea how the wireless network is configured? are the encryption keys correct? Is the wireless adapter and encryption setup compatible? Do you have the SSID right? There's quite a few settings to check.

Troubleshooting a wired ethernet connection is a thousand times easier. You verify if the cable works, the jack works, the drivers are loaded correctly, etc. You try to grab an IP address. You try to ping sites. You try a crossover cable to another computer if you think maybe the port is bad, and you have no other ports to try on the wall. In less than a half hour, you can either find the problem, or verify that the NIC is bad...however, I'm going on the assumption that it's not, since IBM says it worked.
 
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