XP Pro Connectivity Problem

[haysdb]

I have read the FAQ, and tried the WinsockFix. I have also tried the 'netsh int ip reset' fix. My problem fits the profile normally addressed by these fixes, but they haven't worked for me.

The problem PC is a Win XP Pro machine on a LAN with 3 other PC's, 2 XP Pro, 1 Linux. All have Internet access except this one.

From this PC, I can ping all other machines on the LAN, either by name or IP address. I can do ipconfig/release and /renew and /all. I can "view net". I can browse all workgroup computers. In short, everything related to the LAN appears perfectly fine.

In fact, it DOES actually have an Interent connection, but it's just so incredibly slow that pages don't display and Outlook Express times out retrieving mail. I say this because I can sometimes get PART of a website to download if I wait long enough.

It's a P4 2.5/533 machine on an Abit 845 motherboard with integrated LAN. I have not tried a PCI LAN card.

Like I said at the start, I have downloaded and run the WinsockFix tool mentioned in the FAQ, and rebooted, a few times.

The Linux machine is the DHCP and DNS server, but DHCP and DNS seem to be working OK inasmuch as this PC is getting an IP address,

http://www names

are being resolved to IP addresses, and the other two machines are not experiencing similar problems.

All machines on the LAN are connected to a D-Link Broadband router. It has DHCP turned off.

I can't think of what else might be pertinent.

David

 

[bcastner]

Check two things:

1. Make sure the adapter is set to "Auto" to negotiate its Speed and Duplex. To not try to set these values manually.

2. It could be an MTU issue. The best way to check this is to do a Tweak test of your connection. Go to the broadbandreports site, run the tweak test, and set MTU and RWIN values for your adapter based on the recommendations you receive. There is a free utility on the site, DrTCP that makes setting these values easy to do:

http://www.dslreports.com/tweaks

 

[haysdb]

Bill, Thank you for coming to my aid once again.

The adapter is set to auto.

Also, per another thread or FAQ, I have run cwshreader, spybot, adaware, and the LSP thing, but nothing showed up. I rebooted anyway, but still no Internet connection.

The MTU tweak isn't an option since, for all practical purposes, I do not have an Internet connection. I have only gotten part of a page to load once tonight, the rest of the time I just get the "page cannot be displayed" message.

That machine is awfully sluggish on some other things too, but task manager isn't showing anything taking a large percentage of cpu time.

What I think I did to screw things up was delete the network "bridge". That's about the time I started having problems. But that all looks fine now. The bridge is gone.

I will continue to search this forum for other ideas, but I'm not sure even where to LOOK at this point, since it seems like I have tried all the stuff that's supposed to work.

David

 

[bcastner]

Hmmm.

1. Have you tried a different cable?

2. copy and paste the below into notepad as ie_fix.cmd, and then double click the new file to run it:

regsvr32 urlmon.dll
regsvr32 Shdocvw.dll
regsvr32 Msjava.dll
regsvr32 Actxprxy.dll
regsvr32 Oleaut32.dll
regsvr32 Mshtml.dll
regsvr32 Browseui.dll
regsvr32 Shell32.dll

3. If your motherboard has two onboard adapters, disable the second in Device Manager.

4. If you have a 1394 Firewire adapter, use Device Manager to disable it.

 

[toonei]

Try another known good card or buy a new one they are cheap to buy, check your RJ45 cable too. If you install a NIC disable the integrated one. The Bridge is for connecting different networks, if your running TCP/IP on all then it shouldn't really matter as long as they are all on the same network.

Check your Internet Settings in IE also, they may have changed and delete empty your temp folder, browser history etc. while you are there.

 

[haysdb]

Bill, toonei, thanks for your help.

The problem was the onboard Ethernet controller. Pinging the machine from another was showing a 10% packet loss, sometimes more.

I first tried a different cable, but it didn't make any difference, so I then ran through the regsvr32 commands, again no help. Before disabling the 1394 adapter, I plugged in a LinkSys NIC, disabled the onboard controller, and everything seems to be fine now.

Whew!

I have been fighting this problem for a long time.

Thanks guys!!!

David

 

[haysdb]

Comment on the Windows XP 'ping' command:

By default, it sends just 3 packets. This wasn't enough to ever see the problem. The first 10 packets were never dropped. Only with a larger number of packets did I become aware of the packet loss.

The other thing that led me to believe the NIC was OK - I never had any problem, except a slow response time, when copying files over the LAN. I figured if I could view other machines on the network, ping all of them, and copy files over the LAN, that the controller just HAD to be OK. I guess not!

David