Network Connection Issues

[Smar969905]

I am running Win XP home on my system and recently it stopped receiving any information from the internet. I do have 3 seperate firewalls on my system, and have rebooted with none of them running, and the problem persisted. Strangely, it did work before and I never did change any settings. I have also purchased a brand new NIC, installed it, and still the same thing happens, some packets are sent out, but none are received. I have tried using both NICs in my system at the same time, and it doesn't work. I have cable internet that goes to a switch, then to my system and another system. The second system does have internet connectivity, and I have tried different cables from my system to the NIC, and into different ports on the back of the NIC. From what I know, it seems like a software issue in Windows, but I never changed settings, and it just stopped receiving when I started it up one day.

The NIC I have is a Netgear FA311 fast ethernet 10/100 card, and the new one I got was the same, except the old one is revision 1C, and the new one is revision 1D.

Any help here would be appreciated.


Thank you,

Smar969905

 

[bcastner]

Rule #1: Have only one firewall. If you do not like it, find some other firewall. But run only one firewall. Rather than protect yourself from possible instability in your system, you create it by running more than one firewall.

Suggestion #1: The FAH311 is an OK adapter, as long as you never run any peer-2-peer software, or anything else that might really put the adapter through heavy loads. If so, get the chipset manufacturer's drivers:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/j.buchanan/winmx/faq-restart.html

Rule #2. When changing NICs, removing spyware, etc. you might well damange your Winsock service stacks. Read and follow faq779-4625

Suggestion #2: If the WinsockFix utility does not help, read the second half and follow the instructions in MS KB:

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=811259

"How to Recover from Winsock2 corruption"

 

[Smar969905]

Well, thank you for the advice. I have tried the tool, and it still didn't work. I have tried everything that I can think of to get my network going again, but it just isn't going, so I am going for the one method that is 100%...backup and reformatting the drive. Maybe I'll switch to running some version of Linux.


Again, thank you



Smar969905

 

[bcastner]

Firewalls can be a pain to remove completely. You want to pick on firewall, then use Google or the website of the other firewall vendors to find a manual removal tool.

After the cleanup, use the WinsockFix tool again.

 

[bcastner]

Also, open IE, Tools, Internet Options, Connections, and under LAN settings, clear all check boxes.

 

[jmcse]

Bcastner is right. Never run more than one firewall. I don't like any of these personal software firewalls, they cause more problems than there worth. I would go with a linksys router/firewall. They have one that does Stateful packet inspection which is the standard in firewall protection. It also performs dhcp which will allow the computer to have a private address so it is behind the router instead of sitting right out on the internet. I've seen it at best buy for about $99.