Help with a connection to a DSL router

[karlrschneider]

Our boondocks area recently got DSL available...I got both our puters online with the phone-company supplied router in less than 5 minutes and now I'm trying to help a neighbor but it doesn't seem to work.

We made up a CAT5 cable for him to connect his NIC to the router which is at his daughter's house about 150 feet away (the cable is probably 170 feet) He is running Win ME and I configured it properly to use the LAN and it does "connect", sort of...it does load his home page but then the machine freezes up when he tries to jump to another URL. Nothing is clickable, have to reboot and the whole nasty business repeats itself.
;-(


Could the cable length possibly cause this behavior? (We made up one for our own house but it's only about 50 feet long and works perfectly)

Oh, we run Win ME on both our machines too so I'm pretty sure I have everything set up right in that regard. (Please don't give me a hard time about the ME, we've been pretty much satisfied with it considering it's Windoze) :D

Thanks for any advice!

[RoyGBiv]

1. It could be the cable ...

But I doubt it, not with the problem described. Is the machine itself basically freezing, or is it just the web browser not responding?

BTW, it's been so long I've forgotten. Does ME let you drop to a DOS prompt and use the ping command? If so and if it's possible, drop to DOS and ping some random IP address. (216.158.28.197 is the one for DU.) That'll let you know if the network is connected at all.

Beyond that, I have no hard advice, just some guesses.

Is your hardware identical to your neighbor's, and are the connection types exactly the same? If not, determine the differences and find things that could be the culprit, such as different network cards, router types, etc. I know you mentioned a CAT5 cable, which suggest this guess is entirely off-base, but I'll mention it just because of the similarities between problems I've witnessed and what you're experiencing. Is a USB port in play at any point? ME doesn't give perfect support for USB 2.0 ports. I counsel people with anything older than Win2000 or NT not to use them to attempt a high speed data connection because of connectivity problems. They work, just not reliably. In fact, I've seen machines with ME or 98 have conflicts between any kind of network connection when they use a USB port for anything else.

Also, is your neighbor using anything from DLink? This, again, is one of those "works sometimes but not always" things. I don't really know what it is about DLink, but I've personally had problems with their products on every operating system I've used.

I won't give you any static about ME, but that's one big problem I always had with it. What worked perfectly on one system did not work at all on another no matter what I did, usually due to some small difference in hardware configuration.

[karlrschneider]

3. Okay there's some things I can check...

One of the reasons *I* personally prefer to stick with ME is precisely what you mentioned, the ability to run DOS programs...I have a lot of legacy stuff that I need to run from time to time. I don't know what DLink is, AFAIK it isn't an issue. All the computers involved are pretty much vanilla IBM "compatible"...which I built up from components but they're no way identical. None of them are 'brand name' machines with their own particular brand of Windoze...all using the generic version.

He does have a couple of USB devices connected which work okay. I don't really think that's causing a problem but who knows what goes on inside these damnable boxes? :D

I won't have a chance to personally observe the thing until Tuesday since he has to be gone but I did bring his computer home earlier today and got it to connect

(I forgot to say it hooked up to MY DSL/router flawlessly! Then I took it back to him & left it for him to plug in all the wires which he did and later he called me on the phone with these 'problems'...)


(the NIC didn't have the drivers installed but I found them on the net & got it talking to the mainboard)...what gets me is that it -does- connect (but slowly according to what he told me on the phone) but somehow jams up the machine. I'll go over there when he's got some time and try to get more poop. Thanks.


edit: I forgot...it's the whole computer that seems to freeze up if what he's telling me is right...but it does NOT do that if he boots it up with the NIC/router cable DISconnected! That's one of the things that's baffling me...sorry forgot to reply to that part before

[RoyGBiv]

5. DLink is a brand ...

They make routers, modems, network cards, etc.

I have an old laptop that has ME on it. It refuses to use anything made by DLink. Linksys, 3Comm, pretty much anything else and it's all happy. Connect it to a DLink router or USB device, and it acts like it's trying to spit it out. I have never known why.

Techs who work for a local company tell me one of the main problems they deal with is systems with DLink routers or network cards. I have a dozen or so of their dialup modems I've taken out of people's machines and replaced with generic $10 modems to "fix" them. That is, the computers were locking up for aparently no reason, and what fixed this problem was removing a DLink internal modem.

With your other info in mind, that's what I'm getting at, DLink or not. It could be the network card just not wanting to talk to his machine. If you have a spare sitting around, that'd be the first thing I'd try after making sure the drivers are up-to-date.

[karlrschneider]

8. Oh, duh...should have recognized the name. His machine has a NIC

that I installed for him, it's fairly common "NC100" that I had lying around and it might be a problem but it does get him to his home page so it seems unlikely (to me) that it's the problem. Do you think it would be useful to physically remove the dialup modem and also remove it from the system? Maybe there's some kind of conflict there???? yikes
hey thanks for the help

[RoyGBiv]

12. That's a possibility ...

If he's not using it, yank it and see what happens. I had a machine once that froze when I installed a new sound card because there was some conflict between it and my modem. I think, though, that this problem would be apparent just trying to connect to the network.

BTW, how much memory does his machine have? I doubt this is it, but it just occured to me that on older machines, lack of memory can be a problem for high speed connections. I'm talking really low memory, though, like less than 32megs. Most broadband providers won't provide technical support on a machine with less than 64megs.

What I find confusing about the initial problem report is the notion that "Nothing is clickable." That is, I'm wondering if he can click links but nothing happens, not even an attempt at a DNS lookup (it's sometimes hard to tell if he's using IE), he clicks it and it times out, or if he just can't click on anything. If the latter, can he do anything else with the machine, or is the entire system frozen.

From the way it is described, it sounds like everything is okay until his machine gets an influx of high-seepd data, which is why I wonder about the network card having problems or a lack of memory.

I'll go back to the suggestion of pinging an address from a DOS prompt before calling it a night. (Again, I'm assuming the command is there. I don't know fore sure.) That won't solve anything, but it removes the layers of other software applications and let's you get direct feedback on whether the connection is indeed active and stays active once activity starts.

Anyway, I'm glad you consider what I'm doing helping, but mostly I'm just rambling on in confusion along with you. :-)

OnEdit: My problem here is I'm working from a long, rusted memory dealing with ME. The link charlie provided has some good advice on checking things.

[bemildred]

2. Check his DNS settings. See that they match yours. nt

[karlrschneider]

4. I think they must be correct since it will initially connect.

If the DNS settings were wrong,wouldn't it refuse to do anything? I'm a tyro at DSL having had it only for a week or so but I'm learning...

The DSL modem/router is a DHCP server which seems to be working. Maybe I'll know more in a day or 2 when I can have a chance to observe the thing in person, I'm going by mostly phone calls from this fellow who's even more of an idiot on computers than I am. :D
thanks

[bemildred]

6. Depends on the URL.

You can connect fine without DNS if you use IP quad addresses
(things like http://123.123.123.123/whatever) or have a host file.
I brought it up because DNS is one of the common hangs, and it is
possible that the home URL does not require a DNS lookup for
some reason. Also with a router and DSL modem in the loop, they
all have to be made to talk to each other right, and since yours
works and his does not, the first thing I would do is make sure
that his agrees with yours on these issues.

[karlrschneider]

7. Well, it does appear to connect to his home page which is

http://www.iwon.com

I don't know whether it needs a DNS referral (I'm far from expert in this stuff) but I can't figure out why the inability to resolve a DNS would freeze the computer. I've run into DNS problems from time to time without it locking up everything...so...??
Thanks for the feedback, I'll keep on trying. ;-)

[bemildred]

9. Ewwwwww. That's in my junk site list.

I have that blocked in my host file.

That would be a DNS lookup, if I let it do that.

But anyway, if you don't want to check his network
settings, that's fine. Good luck with it.

[karlrschneider]

11. It's not that I don't WANT to check anything, I just don't know how to.

Why are you pissed off at me for asking a question?

[bemildred]

13. I'm not pissed. I'm just done talking. nt

[karlrschneider]

15. Well, thanks for nothing, twit.

Jesus........

[charlie]

10. This link might have something to help

http://www.broadbandreports.com/faq/156

[karlrschneider]

14. Thanks Charlie, that's helpful.

K

[0rganism]

16. You can eliminate cable *length* if it's standard cat5e

Line should be good for a 100m run, and if you were *really* able to connect and not just pulling up some cached page, then there was some data flow. Was he using a normal modem with good results before? You said earlier you gave him an old NIC of yours. Unless you are 100% sure that NIC is in perfect working condition, I'd treat it with a great deal of skepticism.

I'd do the following:

1. Make sure that the LAN at his sister's place is working, i.e. she can use her computer(s) to read web pages.

2. Boot up his computer without the network cable connected. Make sure the configuration hasn't changed, and verify that the NIC is listed properly in the device tree. Bring up a browser just to make sure that it fails an application-layer network access attempt with something other than a freeze. (If his computer freezes every time the network stops working, that's bad news.) Having it spin the hourglass for a little while is probably okay, as long as it comes back within a minute or two. If you see reasonable results, close the browser, you don't want that messing things up for what comes next.

3. With the cable still disconnected, verify that it can still ping localhost (usually set to 127.0.0.1). This will help you establish if the TCP/IP libraries and NIC drivers are loaded properly. Let it run for a minute to see if anything weird happens.

4. Connect the cable, and verify that the computer can ping its gateway router or other hosts on his sister's LAN. Let the pings run for a minute, they won't hurt anything. If the pings are failing, try ARPs. If those fail, try a different NIC or a different cable, whichever's quicker for you. The overwhelming majority of all network connectivity problems are physical -- faulty wiring, loose NIC jack, rogue backhoe operators in your area, etc.

5. If pings were working, run nslookups on some seldom-used addresses -- which will vary from user to user. If the OS supports a full nslookup shell and the gateway router cooperates, you can jump in there and run dns lookups from alternate name servers, which is a pretty good connectivity test. At the very least, you should be able to connect to the ISP's DNS server and look up google.

Stay away from any browser-oriented diagnosis until you're sure the simple stuff is functioning predictably. You want to see what the machine can still do without having it lock up on you.

[RoyGBiv]

17. Did you ever figure this out?

I'm just curious.