Cannot Access the internet!!! 1

[BSmith2518]

I have a network with two computers linked by a linksys Cable/Dsl router and a Cable modem plugged into the router. I am unable to connect to the internet through the IBM Aptiva running Win 98. My laptop which is running Windows Me works fine. Also both computers are networked and I can access files on either computer. The problems is with the IBM computer, whenever I try to access a website I get the error message "Page cannot be displayed" Keep in mind the computer was working fine. The problem started a couple of days ago when I started my computer and tried to access My Documents folder only to find that it was not there. After I had a heart attack and a couple of hours of panic I found that the folder was moved into another folder called C:\Noversion. Now I know I didn't put it there. Could it have been a virus or a hacker? Ever since then I have not been able to access the internet. I have used scandisk, I have scanned for a virus (found none). I also have used a program called configsafe which allows me to go back to previous settings that did work. I unistalled IE 5.5 and reinstall it. None of this helped. Could someone please help me out!

 

[BSmith2518]

One other not I am able to ping my DNS server.

 

[paulwood]

I've never heard of the Noversion thing before, it sounds kinda specific for an accident. Do you have a firewall running, if not get Zone Alarm for both, it's free from

http://www.zonelabs.com

With regards to the internet access, can you ping the router or cable modem if they have ip addresses known to you? Do you get ip addresses for the computers from the cable company or fixed internal ones and is the router also the hub?

 

[BSmith2518]

thanks paulwood for the quick response. I can ping the router but I can't access the settings menu from the IBM computer like I can from my laptop. The routers IP is 192.168.1.1 and I am supposed to be able to type that into my IE and get access to the routers settings menu. When I try that the IE brings an error message that says something like "the operation could not be completed". My Internal ip addresses are issued by the routers DHCP so they are not fixed it depends on which computer is connected first. I do have the zonelabs firewall on my laptop now. I haven't installed it onto the IBM computer because obviously I don't have a connection.

 

[paulwood]

Are you using TCP/IP for the internal network, ie. the bit that works?

 

[BSmith2518]

yes the IBM has a TCP/IP ati at2000PNP ethernet and the laptop has an Intel 8255x-based Integrated fast ethernet.

 

[paulwood]

Are the settings for a proxy server correct in IE, you should probably have the ip address for the router in there. If not, try putting it in. So you don't have to wait for a timeout when opening IE, check/change the settings by right-clicking the IE icon and selecting properties.

 

[BSmith2518]

The settings are correct in IE. The connection worked before with the same settings. If I put router in the proxy how exactly do I do that? In the LAN connections? That's where i put it and it didn't help.

 

[BSmith2518]

I put the proxy in as

http://192.168.1.1

is that correct?

 

[paulwood]

I'm assuming you mean Connections > Lan Settings so yes that's where it should be, and yes the setting looks right assuming the router is acting as a proxy server.

I think a recap is in order X-)

Laptop ME works fine, accesses other computer and internet
IBM Win98 accesses other computer, can ping router but browser doesn't work
Router acts as proxy and dhcp server, both computers successfully obtain ip addresses from it
Local network is exclusively running TCP/IP

The finger of suspicion is pointing at either the tcp/ip services or Internet Explorer. This is making the assumption that you have not had a 'visitor' who has done something unusual, hackers normally don't disable access for a computer they can hack. Because you can access the local network, which uses the same card as internet access, and you can ping the router, it's most likely IE. I note you have uninstalled and reinstalled, did you completely uninstall? If not, there is a link I have someplace to clean IE so you can start again. I'll just go have a look for it.

 

[paulwood]

Found it! To get rid of IE try IEradicator

http://www.98lite.net/ieradicator.html

If it works you can then do a clean install of 5.5

 

[BSmith2518]

I uninstalled the ie5.5 completly but now I can not reinstall it with the copy I have. I believe the ie5.5 install is only an upgrade. I think I am going to just use my factory restore disk. Maybe that will work.

 

[BSmith2518]

In case anyone cares the factory restore was the only thing that worked

 

[paulwood]

Thanks for the feedback, all information we can get may help in the future