cannot connect XP to router

I

izakmarais

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Hi all,

I have been using ADSL happily for some time now with my NetGear router in bridge mode and both my xbox and my Ubuntu PC connected to it. Now I want to connect my landlord's XP PC to it (so we can share the line), but I cannot get the PC to see the router. It keeps giving the "no or limited connectiviy" error.

Can anybody please help me out?

The symptoms:
1) Under "Control Panel->Network connections->LAN connection", there is "no or limited connectivity"
2) I cannot ping the router or visit its setup page in the browser.

With the help of webafrica support people, this is what I have tried/eliminated so far:
1) The router/ports/cable works since it works with other devices
2) The light on the corresponding router port and at the back of the PC lights up green, so the PC hardware seems to be working
3) The PC's TCP/IP properties are set to automatically acquire an IP adress
(this is how it should be, apparently)
4) There is no access list on the router restricting access to it
5) I have uninstalled the PCs ehternet drivers, restarted and reinstalled them from the CD that came with the motherboard. This did not fix the problem.

Could this be the Windows firewall causing this?

Any help will be greatly appreciated!
Thanks in advance
Izak
 
I'm having the same problem.

since I put my Billion router into Bridge Mode I cannot see it anymore.

Just make sure that you are not trying to access the router from a browser which has a proxy configured... disable the proxy first, or put an exception for the router address.
 
What happens if you "diagnose" the connection? Basically right click on where it says "limited connectivity" and click diagnose and repair.

Also, take your router address:

Open the TCP/IP properties again and enter the router IP as the primary DNS server. Assign the IP address as manual IP in the same range as your Linux box, eg. 192.168.1.25 etc.

Netmask should be 255.255.255.0 I think.

Also, you could try to use Winsock Xp fix to see if it's not an issue with TCP/IP settings being corrupt.

http://www.snapfiles.com/get/winsockxpfix.html
 
@ Garyvdh: Thanks for the tip, but since I cannot ping the router, I suspect the problem lies deeper than a browser setting.

@ teraside: Thanks for the help. I'll try your advice tonight. I can't remember what the result of diagnose was. I'll try that too and let you know.

Regarding Winsock Xp: the PC is only a couple of months old, and as a last resort I might ask my landlord to take it back to the place he bought it to see if they can get the connection set up. However, they have said they will charge their hourly rate if the fault was caused by some non-standard software setting, so I don't want to mess with the registry and give them reason to do that :). Also, since the PC is pretty new I doubt whether the TCP/IP settings will have been corrupted, but I'll ask my landlord whether he's had any trouble with adware or network related software.
 
Thanks, I'll keep that in mind.

No, there were no conflicts in the device manager.
 
Which service pack does the system run? I've seen a few issues where people don't have connectivity on SP3.

A search in that direction might help as well ;)
 
OK, I spent another hour or more last night trying to get this to work. Here are the results. Sorry for the long post, but the best way to catch mistakes is to be thorough.

What happens if you "diagnose" the connection? Basically right click on where it says "limited connectivity" and click diagnose and repair.
Click to expand...

When I do this a box pops up and that informs me that "Windows is taking the following action: Renewing your IP address." After a while it fails and returns to limited or no connectivity, with status saying it could not get an IP address from the DHCP server.

Open the TCP/IP properties again and enter the router IP as the primary DNS server. Assign the IP address as manual IP in the same range as your Linux box, eg. 192.168.1.25 etc.
Click to expand...

After doing this, the LAN connection changed to "Connected, Firewalled". However, I still could not ping the modem IP in the command prompt. Now instead of saying "destination host unreachable" the ping command said something like "request timed out". I should be able to ping the modem, shouldn't I? I still couldn't access the modem interface in the browser either. Also what should the gateway be?

Could anybody please just check that I understand the steps correctly? I just want to make sure I understand the way things are supposed to work correctly on XP. Firstly, there are two options:
1) have the ISP password and login name on the router, the router estanlishes the PPPoE connection and all devices connected to it share that connection. On my Netgear router this is known as "Router and Modem mode".
2) have each device open its own PPPoE connection. This is the mode I want to use since my landlord and I want to have seperate ISP accounts. On my Netgear router this is known as "Modem only mode". People also refer to this as bridge mode?

To get XP working with option (1):
Just connect the router (which has sucessfully established an ADSL internet connection) ,make sure the LAN connection works and set the browser connection options to "never dial a connection". Is there more to it than this?
To get XP working with option (2):
Create a new "broadband connection" under "network connections" that requires a username and password (the ISP provided ones). "Dial" using this connection. When I do this it says "connecting to WAN miniport". Is this correct?

Of course option 2 fails when the LAN connection has "limited or no connectivity". However, it also fails when I force the IP like described in the quote above.

Some extra info:
Which service pack does the system run?
Click to expand...
It indeed runs SP3.

If you don't want to use Winsock fix, try this instead:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/299357
Click to expand...
After running netsh int ip reset resetlog.txt at the command prompt the log file did contain some info about bad values being reset.
For a limited period there was a LAN connection (with IP adress and DNS set to be acquired automatic).

However, here my Netgear router started giving problems (switching on and off by itself). When it eventually came back on, my Linux box could connect again, but XP went back to "limited or no connectivity". This has been a recurring problem with the router for a while: under heavy load it resets. I took it in this morning to have it replaced.

So here's hoping a new router does the trick... Do I have the required steps for options 1 and 2 above correct?
 
Well basically your new router should support PPPoE Relay, or Half Bridge mode.

This means you can have a standard connection set up on the router, but it allows the neighbour to connect through a dialup PPPoE connection.

If the requirements above are met, then those steps are correct ;)
 
If the router runs in pure bridge mode it's conceivable it might not run a DHCP server (though it should). In any case you don't seem to be getting an address via DHCP.

What are the actual IP addresses and netmasks of your router, your xbox, and your Ubuntu machine?

How is your landlord's PC connected - is there a hub or switch? Or is it wireless? Or is it wired directly into the router?
 
Source: http://www.techsupportforum.com/microsoft-support/windows-xp-support/246062-windows-xp-sp3-killed-all-internet-help.html

When installing SP3 it adds a new service for Ethernet and Internet connections.

First go to Start>Run and type "services.msc" And Click OK.

Second, You will want to scroll to the bottom and You'll notice "Wired AutoConfig", This is a new feature with SP3 and needs to be enabled so we will want to Right+Click and Go to Properties.

There will be a Drop-down box that probably says Manual. This needs to be changed to Automatic. Then Click OK.

After the previous steps have been followed Right+Click on "Wired AutoConfig" Again and Choose, "Start" Since the service hasn’t officially been started we need to start it.
Click to expand...

If this does not help, I don't know what is wrong. Remember to insert the router IP at the DNS server address.
 
is there not an IP conflict with the linux machine and because its not windows its not giving you the correct error. try doing things without the linux, if you manually assign an ip and there are still problems then something is wrong with the network adaptor(i think) have you tried a different port on the router, maybe that port is faulty?
 
Just a short correction on my part:

I said you could have a normal PPPoE connection and a dialup connection on the router. That is in fact not correct.

If the router is not in bridged mode, the neighbour would be using your ISP details, as you can't assign the "port" to a specific account etc.

I hope you understand, both of you will need to dial up.
 
Well basically your new router should support PPPoE Relay, or Half Bridge mode.
Click to expand...

Hmm, I doubt they will give me a different model, they will probably replace it with the same one, i.e. "Netgear DG834G wireless-G ADSL router". To place this router in bridge mode I had to access a page on the router that does not have any links to it (http://192.168.0.1/setup.cgi?next_file=mode.htm). I found the link to this page by searching on the internet, on forums like these. I see this page mentions PPPoE relay support for the DG834G v3; I don't which version I had. Another thread on these forums mentions someone else struggling with PPPoE relay for the same router. So PPPoE Relay mode, if it is available, should be used instead of the "modem only" mode?

What are the actual IP addresses and netmasks of your router, your xbox, and your Ubuntu machine? How is your landlord's PC connected - is there a hub or switch? Or is it wireless? Or is it wired directly into the router?
Click to expand...

All devices are wired directly to the router; wireless mode is turned off, there are no other hubs or switches.
The router IP is 192.168.0.1.
The Ubuntu PC IP: After setting it to DHCP mode yesterday it was 192.168.0.2. Previously it had been set to "roaming mode"; in this mode it could create a PPPoE connection and browse the web apparently without an IP adress, but could not access the router interface at 192.168.0.1 while the router was in bridge mode.

When I get the new router I will write down the details about IP adresses and netmasks for all 3 devices and post them here. I'll also try the SP3 tip. Although that advice does seem more suitable for someone who upgraded to SP3 rather than a new PC that came with it installed?

Remember to insert the router IP at the DNS server address.
Click to expand...
Like I mentioned earlier, doing this did remove the LAN connection error message, but what is the next step to then getting internet? (For either option 1 or 2 from my previous post?) Should I be able to ping the router after doing this?

@hoegh: The problem persisted regardless of whether the Linux PC is on or off.

Thank you all for the help!:)
 
Just see my last post above this one. Both of you would need to create a dialup connection (does Linux support this? )
 
Ah ok. By "dial up" you mean the PPPoE session is initiated by the device connected to the router as opposed to the router itself? Yes I had this working on both my Linux pc and my xbox in anticipation of connecting my landlord as well.

So I should ignore what you said about PPPoE relay? According to Wikepedia definition of bridge mode
While in this mode, the router basically accepts only one device and controls all network traffic dedicated to this device.
Click to expand...

This does not sound right? Sorry I'm not a network expert, but I am an electronic engineer, so I am trying to understand the different modes as well as I can.
 
Wikipedia isn't the best source of information ;)

I'm no network expert either, far from it, but I do know if my router is in bridged mode, I can create a dialup connection with each pc on the network, be it wired or wireless ;)
 
Do you know the IP addr of your xbox?

If you can ping the router (192.168.0.1) from your ubuntu, you should be able to do the same from the landlord's xp. I'm wondering if the cable is faulty (obviously something is connected because windows wouldn't recognise the connection otherwise.

Can any of your devices be pinged from the landlord's machine?

Also, as mentioned above, you'll need to use PPPOE from the xp machine, by creating a new broadband connection.
 
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