Unable to Browse web

[Angel]

We have 2 PCs (both with XP Home) connected to a switch - connected to the ADSL modem.
When the ADSL was installed both PCs could access the web just fine. Recently 1 of the PCs was reformatted, and XP reinstalled etc., now that PC can't access the web anymore.
The connection is still there, but you can't open web pages using the name anymore, if you can get hold of the IP address of the website it will open the page.
eg type in http://64.233.167.99/ in the address and it will open Google's page, type in http://www.google.com and it tells you to go jump in a lake.

Any ideas...

 

[mbs]

Check your DNS settings on the 'broken' PC...
I think Primary should be 196.25.1.11 for Telkrap's server...

 

[Angel]

I have set the DNS to 196.43.1.13 and 196.43.3.206, which is the DNS settings for the working PC, I have also tried 196.25.1.11, as well as the ones supplied by Telkom and all the ones supplied by posts on this site...
None of them seem to do the trick

 

[mbs]

Heh? Strange... Anyway, the symptoms you describe are due to an inability to resolve domain names and nothing else, to my knowledge. This means your 'broken' PC is not referencing a DNS to translate the URL name into an IP address. Whichever browser you're using, check to see that if there are any config settings that concern a DNS, that the correct IP is recorded. If this is OK, the next thing to check would be your network connectivity mechanism - make sure that the DNS IP is correctly recorded in your TCP/IP settings. I think that for most Windows users, it is usually not necessary to specify DNS settings, as these should be automatically assigned by the ISP on connecting. If all of this still doesn't help, maybe some of the network sysadmins familiar with Windows on this forum could assist - it might even be an XP Home problem. I use mainly Linux, so my knowledge and assistance is limited...

 

[georgestrydom]

This is a really wild suggestion, but try changing your auto speed negotiation to fixed 10mb duplex. I have exactly the same setup as you and I used to have two network cards in the PC. One onboard and one PCI slot. The pci one would connect easily at full speed, but the onboard one would connect very slowly and would take forever to load a page. Eventually i changed settings to fixed 10mb duplex and it worked perfectly. My mobo is a Intel 865 if that helps. Recently I tried a different way to setup network connections, I got rid of the PCI card and used my mobo " Bridge Connections" facility. This does what it says and gives you a 400mb Mac bridge connection. It's a cross between the 1394 and lan connection. Now when my dialup connects and I click on the little 2 PC icon, it actually reports a 1Mbps connection. I also use raspppoe instead of standard pppoe which really improves latency. If you are into gaming, you have to try it.

 

[Angel]

The joy of PC!!! It now works, we gave up and tried to get the "broken" PC to share the "fixed" PC's internet connection. After disabling Zonealarm we got the "broken" PC connected and surfing, no problem. Then just to see we tried the connecting again using the "broken" PC's ADSL connection... NO PROBLEM!!! However put Zonealarm back and same problem. So we uninstalled Zonealarm downloaded the latest version and voila! Up and running with no problems. I'm not sure what went wrong, or how that fixed it 'cause the other PC has been running Zonealarm with no problems... Whatever it works...
Thanx for the help.

 

[mbs]

Glad to hear you're now OK! Moral of the story: it's best to check that you're using the latest stable versions of app software! I had similar problems of conflict with The Gimp and Sodipodi on a Windows box a while ago, though thankfully it did not affect things like network connectivity, just messed up the display resolution...