Network Frustration

[Emmaxxx]

Hi
I'm abosolutely pulling my hair out with this, been at it for best part of the weekend and family not too appreciative as you could imagine.

Where do I begin?.....I've 3 Pc's on my wired network, call them A, B & C.
PC 'A' is WinXP Pro and B&C are WinXP Home.
The problem is, PC's B & C cannot see my router, and cannot renew an ip address.

My Linksys router as been re-located and before the move everything worked just fine!
I know the re-wiring of the Cat5 cable is ok because PC 'A' as been tried at each of the 3 points and connects to the Net with no problem, but as soon as I switch back to PC B&C......no connection!

As for settings....Nothing as been changed from when it worked OK before.
My TCP/IP Properties are set to "Obtain an ip address automatically"
DHCP is set on my router. My router configuration is only accessible from PC 'A'
My Local Area Connection shows: TCP/IP, Quos Packet Sheduler, File and printer sharing M/S Networks and Client for M/S Networks.
And finally the "Workgroup" name for each PC is set to 'Workgroup'

Please could someone tell me where I'm going wrong......before my family have me taken away in a straight jacket!

Thanx
M

[VIPER_1069]

CHECK that you also have OBTAIN DNS server address automatically on each machine connected to the router as well as obtain IP address


if the network connectors at the pc end are on pci cards and not the motherboard check that they are firmly seated and not come loose during the move

[Emmaxxx]

Hiya Thanx for your reply

IP and DNS are set to automatic.
All plugs ok, as confirmed by the display on the router that 3 ports have a connection and on the nic cards the green lights are lit.
PC 'A' (the one that's working) has a 1gig ethernet connection on the mobo.
I've tried connecting the modem direct to PC 'C' and got a Net connection to confirm all was well with the NIC card.

???

Thanx
M

[scarecrow]

Can your puters ping one another? (use both the IP given by righclicking the network interface icon, as well as the hostname of each one).
Just open a console, and type in
ping 192.168.0.124 (or whatever ip) or
ping emmasputer.workgroup.net (or whatever hostname) or simply
ping emmasputer
...and so on.

[Emmaxxx]

Hello Scarecrow, thanx for your reply

Well, I've made a bit of progress, 2 out of the PC's are now communicating.
PC 'B' has no response from pinging and has an invalid IP address (ipconfig).

To get PC 'C' working I uninstalled my Nic from Device Manager, rebooted and then ran the network setup wizard. This created a Network Bridge, which I didn't have before and that seemed to do the trick.

I've tried mirroring the same with 'B' but to no avail
My next step is to install a new card, I may have a spare one somewhere lying around.......fingers crossed

Thanx for your help guys.

M***

[Emmaxxx]

Eureka !

Well, all are now communicating and you're all probably wondering what was wrong.....it was so simple you wouldn't believe.

It's been bugging me since the weekend.....why would one PC work happily at all 3 locations connected via the router and not the other 2 PC's?
The 2 pcs worked ok when connected direct to the modem, so surely the land cards were working. No settings were changed on any of the 3 PC's and router configuration the same. All lights were showing and stable on the router and cards, so you would think all is fine there. All I did was relocate the router/cable and refit RJ45 plugs......so what could have changed?
The answer was in the latter.....the RJ45 connections. They were wired up wrong!! I took the combination of colours from a patch lead, so I assumed that was correct. So then why would one of the PC's work, routing through the wrongly wired RJ45's? Strange!
With my sanity back, much to my familys relief, life here has returned to normal "Sigh"
For my next venture, I thought about converting to a Cat6 network....but that's for another day. Haha!

Thanx for your help guys.
Emma
***

[Duracell]

So then why would one of the PC's work, routing through the wrongly wired RJ45's? Strange!

e.g. some 3com NICs having a "auto transpose function"; you can use a straight cable or a cross-over one for all purposes, it doesn't matter;


Greetings from
Duracell

[scarecrow]

A generic all-purpose crossover cable is normally the answer- but I can recall annoying situations some 7 years ago when trying to make a measly 3com 905-family NIC interface behaving decently.
Since then I had no real problems, but I can't recall when was the last time I had to deal with a 3com NIC...

[VIPER_1069]

Eureka !
They were wired up wrong!! Thanx for your help guys.
Emma
***

this is the reason why i just cut out the hard part and brainache ...and just buy the cable i need !

lol sure it costs a little more but its less headaches gettin it all up and running its just plug and go

glad you got sorted