Help connecting to LAN

Hi Everybody

I was hoping I could get some help with a laptop that I am trying to connect to a LAN, that was previously part of a Novell network. The problem I am getting is that the laptop cannot communicate with the router for internet access. I can ping other computers but not the default gateway.

I have set the LAN properties to use both DHCP and static IP address, but the same problem persists.

This laptop was previously set up to use a proxy for internet use, so I have disabled this, and there were also entries in the hosts file related to servers from it's previous network so I took these out and the only entry left is for the loopback address.

So basically the laptop's network settings should now be as normal for a standalone machine, but it just will not communicate with the default gateway.

Any help or suggestions would be really appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

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Comments

Smallguy

ws the old novel network using IPX/SPX or TCP/IP

you mgiht want ot remove any protocols that your not using incase the system is using the wring protocol.

honestly what I do when evera macihne is going form a different network OS to and MS network is back up data and format.

areu still trying ot log on using as novel client or have u changed it to use the micrsoft cleints?

what OS are u using?

grey fox

Hi Smallguy

TCP/IP is the only protocol in use, and only Client for MS Networks is installed, on Windows XP.

Somebody else has said that I should try re-installing, but I wanted to try to get my head around the problem first, and try to find an answer.

Also the person who actually owns the laptop doesn't have their installation disks

sprkymrk

Can you verify with an ipconfig /all that everything is exactly correct?
Then make sure there are no static/persistant routes by typing route print at the cmd prompt. If anything shows up at the bottom as static routes remove them with route delete ip address.

Also make sure that under advanced TCP/IP properties there are no extra Default Gateways.

grey fox

Hi sprkmrk

I used ipconfig /all and everything seemed to be correct, the same goes for the TCP/IP properties and default Gateways.

I have not tried the route print tip though, so I will give that a try and let you know how it goes. Thanks mate.

JDMurray

grey fox wrote:

I can ping other computers but not the default gateway.

Can other computers on your LAN successfully ping the gateway? If so, compare their TCP/IP settings with those on your laptop to see if you missed anything. If not, your gateway is set to not respond to ICMP ECHO requests.

Assuming the gateway is your LAN's Internet access, can you ping through the gateway to hosts on the other side using an IP address, such as 4.2.2.2?

blargoe

Check to see if the link speed and duplex were manually set instead of auto

Try a different ethernet adapter

grey fox

Hi jdmurray & blargoe

Sorry about the late reply, I was out last night.

I tried pinging a few addresses on the LAN and the laptop was able to see all of them, it just would not ping the default gateway, or anything outside of the LAN (I tried to ping bbc.co.uk).

This was also happening on both the NIC and wireless NIC, which were both configured in the same way to use DHCP.

One thing I did find out today though is that the LAN and Wireless connections were bridged, and my mate deleted that bridge when he was trying to troubleshoot the issue himself.

I still have not had a chance to try out sprkymrk's tip yet, hopefully I will do today, and I will keep you guys posted.

Can I also say a real big thanks to all you guys for taking an interest in this problem and for your tips.

blargoe

What kind of machine is the default gateway? Are you getting "Request timed out" when you ping or a different error?

Maybe it's possible there could be an ARP problem? If it's not too intrusive you could try to power cycle the switch that the PC is connected to and also flush the arp table on the gateway (a reboot of the gateway would also accomplish this I guess). You could arp -a on the PC and make sure the mac address you get for the gateway IP, if it'sw listed, is the correct mac address.

grey fox

Hi everybody

Sorry for replying so late, have been so busy...

I managed to get the laptop working, and my mate now has internet access, so thanks to you all for your help.

JDMurray

What was the solution that got it all working?

grey fox

To be totally honest, I'm not sure. Sorry for not posting this earlier, was short on time.

I tried the route print and arp -a suggestions before plugging the laptop into a network, because I wanted to know what entries where already present. arp -a was empty, and route print only returned what I think are the default entries: 0.0.0.0; 127.0.0.0; 255.255.255.255

Finally I just plugged the thing in and lo and behold, internet access. Now I promise you when I was trying to sort this thing out last Friday one of the first steps I took was to use the repair facility, and afterwards I used ipconfig /release and /renew to troubleshoot.

There must be another cache that needed to be cleared, the arp cache perhaps, which maybe cleared itself because of after a time. I have to admit that I am a little stumped by this, which is probably why I have not taken the 70-291 yet.

Once again though a big thank you to everybody who tried to help me.

malcybood

Another thing you could have tried is removing the LAN and WLAN driver from device manager whilst in safe mode, reboot machine and reinstall in normal win xp/2000.

I've found this usually fixes strange issues where certain parts of TCP/IP don't work.

At least it's fixed now man!

Malc