Weird ..... Limited or no connectivity

[_dan_]

I went round to fix what I thought should be an easy problem in someones house the other day. 4 hours later I've got nowhere and it's driving me crazy.

Symptoms are.....

Guy has a Zyxel 660W ADSL router. Normally his desktop PC is connected via ethernet cable and a laptop via wireless. Desktop PC is XP SP2. This setup has been working fine for months till last week.

Desktop PC has started showing "Limted or no connectivity" when connected to the router, it doesn't get a "192.168.1.2" address assigned by DCHP and eventually gets assigned a default IP (169.xxx.xxx.xxx) by windows.

When the same cable is plugged into the laptop the router does it's DCHP thing and assigns a normal IP.

So I tried manually assigning an IP, subnet, and gateway to the desktop PC and still nothing. I can't even ping the router (192.168.1.1).

I started googling around and found this is a pretty common bug in XP SP2. Found some links to some patches and hotfixes. Also some utilities that will reset corrupt TCP/IP and winsock tables. But I cannot get the bugger working!!

Also I tried reinstalling NIC drivers, and even installed a wireless PCI card to try and connect to the router, but even when it connects through the Wifi card with full signal exactly the same problams occurs .... "limited or no connectivity"...

I'm at my wits end now, I hate been beaten, especially when I'm fixing it for someone who's willing to pay me!!

Sorry for the long post.

Any ideas greatly appreciated....cheers...Dan

>> Edited by _dan_ on Tuesday 4th October 09:03

[_dobbo_]

Any errors in the event log at system startup time? These might point to the problem.

If it were me, next thing I'd try would be to uninstall TCP-IP, reboot and re-install. Not sure it will help but worth a try.

[_dan_]

_dobbo_ said:

If it were me, next thing I'd try would be to uninstall TCP-IP, reboot and re-install. Not sure it will help but worth a try.

I thought about doing this but the "Uninstall" option in the network properties is greyed out.

[_dan_]

_dobbo_ said:

If it were me, next thing I'd try would be to uninstall TCP-IP, reboot and re-install. Not sure it will help but worth a try.

I thought about doing this but the "Uninstall" option in the network properties is greyed out.

[GreenV8S]

Any networking problems with XPSP2 immediately make me think firewall, or rather poxy effing firewall.

Turn it off, jump up and down on it, cut it into little pieces, burn the pieces, scatter the ashes, and just hope it's really really dead this time.

[S13_Alan]

_dan_ said:

I went round to fix what I thought should be an easy problem in someones house the other day. 4 hours later I've got nowhere and it's driving me crazy. Symptoms are..... Guy has a Zyxel 660W ADSL router. Normally his desktop PC is connected via ethernet cable and a laptop via wireless. Desktop PC is XP SP2. This setup has been working fine for months till last week. Desktop PC has started showing "Limted or no connectivity" when connected to the router, it doesn't get a "192.168.1.2" address assigned by DCHP and eventually gets assigned a default IP (169.xxx.xxx.xxx) by windows. When the same cable is plugged into the laptop the router does it's DCHP thing and assigns a normal IP. So I tried manually assigning an IP, subnet, and gateway to the desktop PC and still nothing. I can't even ping the router (192.168.1.1). I started googling around and found this is a pretty common bug in XP SP2. Found some links to some patches and hotfixes. Also some utilities that will reset corrupt TCP/IP and winsock tables. But I cannot get the bugger working!! Also I tried reinstalling NIC drivers, and even installed a wireless PCI card to try and connect to the router, but even when it connects through the Wifi card with full signal exactly the same problams occurs .... "limited or no connectivity"... I'm at my wits end now, I hate been beaten, especially when I'm fixing it for someone who's willing to pay me!! Sorry for the long post. Any ideas greatly appreciated....cheers...Dan >> Edited by _dan_ on Tuesday 4th October 09:03

Is it cable or adsl ? What happens when you try it on the modem itself, do you still get a 169 ip ?

Did you try a winsock fix ? If not, go into dos window, type 'netsh winsock reset catalog' and might aswell do 'netsh firewall reset' but i woulddisable the service anyway because i dont use it.

Usually that plus a reboot of everything will fix a lot of 169ip problems.

[_dan_]

It's ADSL, and it's a modem/router/firewall all-in-one. Tried the winsock reset, didn't try the firewall reset. But he is using Zonealarm as a firewall anyway and I did try turning that off.

[S13_Alan]

_dan_ said:

It's ADSL, and it's a modem/router/firewall all-in-one. Tried the winsock reset, didn't try the firewall reset. But he is using Zonealarm as a firewall anyway and I did try turning that off.

Will it release and renew the ip after that initial time ?

Usually i find it will display a 169 in network connections but when you try release/renew in dos it gives an error. It is gonna have to be set to use dhcp/auto assign for that to work clearly. But if it gives an error you get a good clue as to what is wrong.


Also try stopping and restarting the DHCP client in windows if it wont renew. Could uninstall/reinstall tcp/ip.

[_dan_]

Can't uninstall TCP in XP (SP2?), apparently it's an integral part of the OS now!

I think I need to mess around with the NETSH commands some more.

Good idea with the DCHP client service too, forgot about that! I won't be able to try any of this till tomorrow or thursday though as I'm working in the smoke right now!

Cheers for the replies guys, anymore welcome!!