Hi guys. Got a new housemate in recently (Nui fwiw). He had no problems sharing the internet (Optus Cable) through our router as soon as he booted up (without adjusting any settings on his comp). But since he re-formatted the other day (All comps in house use XP Pro) his comp can't/won't detect the net OR my comp on the network.

Optus is our ISP but this isn't an Optus issue. We've tried all the usual Internet Wizard configuration stuff but I get the feeling we're missing something obvious?!

Workgroup name is default "Mshome". Do we need to manually give his comp an IP#? We've tooled around a bit in the network card TCP/IP properties box & "Internet Options" in the Explorer tools tab, but we're flat out of ideas.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated for us IT illiterate souls.

Do you have a static IP on your own machine? If so, what is it? Also, what sort of modem are you using, and what is the IP address for the modem?

FB

EDIT: Hitting the sack after work, so I will pump you some info.

Go into your TCP/IP settings and see what settings you have, and make sure that your mates machine mirror your settings, apart from the IP address. For example, if yours says to obtain an IP address automatically, then make your mates computer the same. However, if you have an IP / Subnet Mask / default gateway setting in your computer, make you mates the same, except make the last digit of the IP address different. If you have an IP address such as 10.0.0.1 then make his 10.0.0.2 and so forth. Just make sure that you don't give your mate an IP address that is the same as another computer on your network, or your modem. Once you have done that, then go into your internet options connection panel and click the setup button to configure the internet. If that doesn't work, then get some more advice tomorrow.... ^_^ because I am a tired bear and bed beckons... :)

FB

last edited by FurryBear at 02:23:50 16/Jul/07

are the network drivers installed on the computer after the reformat?

1. What kinda router do you have.

2. Is DHCP running on that router?

3. Assuming your internet connection is fine, and you are connecting through the same router, are you using a static IP address, or DHCP ? Easiest way to determine this is probably to go: Start, Run - Type in 'cmd' hit enter. Type 'ipconfig', hit enter. Check out the IP address that you have. Then try 'ipconfig /renew', if it works, you're DHCP, if it doesn't, your static, and you need to set your friends PC to similar settings to yours as FB explained.

easy info getter: download a Knoppix/Ubuntu live iso on one of your working machines.. burn it and boot up from it on the machine you're having issues with.

the distro will often announce defective hardware on bootup. if you can get to the desktop of a live *nix distro and cruise the net you've got prolly got some of silly Windows network configuration problem. if you run thru some kind of proxy this won't be too hard to configure in linux. I'm sure many hard-core linux oldskoolers are still s***ty about just how easy it is for the average random n00b to use their sacred OS of choice :/

if you've found the problem to be Windows based but can't figure what to do driver-wise.. just got a lan! *every* lan has some dude who's got a library of varying Windows vers (oem, retail, upgrade, corp etc) that have been cut down and injected with drivers for just about every peice of hardware known to geeks ;)

still.. the *nix live-cd option would prolly help the best if you're not sure of what network device you need to be hunting down the software for. alternatively, you could just open the case and look at the network card...

if you've found the problem to be Windows based but can't figure what to do driver-wise.. just got a lan! *every* lan has some dude who's got a library of varying Windows vers (oem, retail, upgrade, corp etc) that have been cut down and injected with drivers for just about every peice of hardware known to geeks ;)

or you could just download the specific drivers for your hardware on one pc & transfer it via cd?

you seem to have this thing for disc media :/


I'm told that stuff has died off becuase it's banned on most workplaces.. yet the humble memorystick can be easily carried in to copy those emails the employer/local big brother will sack you for revieving if they catch you


it's good we have 8gig memsticks these days eh.. dvd media sucs teh cawk

Thanx guys. Modem is standard motorola that Optus supplied?? Router is a Netgear RP614.

Tried the 'ipconfig /renew' and it failed. Strange, I always thought my/our IPs were *not* static.

You could be right Willis, I've had network driver issues before. 90% sure this is the problem. I'll post again if installing the drivers fails.

Cheers guys.

it's good we have 8gig memsticks these days eh.. dvd media sucs teh cawk

and if your usb ports aren't supported by windows' built in drivers? phew, good thing I have the drivers on cd eh.

and if your usb ports aren't supported by windows' built in drivers?

That's crazy talk.