Lost connectivity with network computer, can't ping 1

[TheDukeofNothing]

I have a small 4 computer network with a HP network deskjet printer on it. Two of the computers are wired and are running Win2k Professional. The other two computers are wireless with one on Win2k Pro and the other using XP Professional. I just recently lost printer connectivity on my gateway (wired) computer. During troubleshooting, I found that I can ping the loopback address 127.0.0.1, but I can not ping any external device including the router, from the gateway computer. I can however access the Internet and I can see all the other computers on the network using "My Network Places".

The "nbtstat -c" command returns IP addresses and device names for the printer and the other computers when I issue it from the gateway computer.

I tried pinging with the other 3 computers and they can ping anything on the network except the gateway machine. I can also print over the network on the other computers. This tells me the problem is on the gateway computer and since I have Internet access I assume that my network cable and card are working okay. That leads me to believe that I have a software problem so I tried uninstalling and reinstalling TCP/IP on the gateway computer but that did not correct the problem. I have checked any error logs that seem pertinent but don't find any errors connected to the ping failure.

Since I don't print all that often I don't know when the problem occurred so trying to tie it to some system change is futile.

Can someone please offer a suggestion as to what has gone wrong?

Thanks in advance for any assistance.

 

[edfair]

First, a shutdown and power off all the way via power cord to see if it initializes on the next boot.
Next is to clean out the network stuff and power cycle and reintall the network stuff.
Sounds like it has gotten itself into another address range.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[TheDukeofNothing]

Thanks for the reply edfair. Could you be just a bit more explicit regarding "clean out the network stuff". I'm not quite sure what stuff you are talking about.

Again, many thanks for the help.

 

[edfair]

Different versions have different places to find the stuff but using 98 as a template, start, settings, control panel, network, brings up a screen showing a client, an adaptor, and a protocol. Removing the adaptor removes everything from networking. You could also do it through the device manager.
XP gets there through start, control panel, system, hardware, device manager.
On the following boot the hardware will be detected and an attempt made to reload the drivers. If the drivers were the problem the reload should resolve it.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[TheDukeofNothing]

Thanks again edfair. "Remove the adaptor" is what I needed to know. I wasn't sure that would remove all the network software but I guess I should have been smart enough to figure it out.

Have a nice day.

 

[Guest_imported]

I can now say that edfarir's fix worked. It actually took two steps to fix my problem. First I removed the network adapter from the system and reinstalled it and its drivers. Then I had to remove TCP/IP and reinstall it and bingo everything fell into place. It took several re-boots but it was worth it.

 

[edfair]

Glad it worked. Wasn't aware that the TPCIP held a problem over on XP so I have learned something too.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.