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You are here: Home / Open Threads / Open Thread

Open Thread

by John Cole|  August 29, 201011:00 am| 42 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads

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Continuing my self-imposed media blackout this weekend, and apparently my desktop computer has decided to help me. I have no idea what has happened, but I shut down my computer for two days, fired it back up this morning, and it now no longer connects to the internet. My laptop works with the wireless, but my desktop no longer works. Any ideas what I can do with my Windows 7 machine for it to recognize my modem?

*** Update ***

Fixed it. For some reason, I had two networks running. I disabled the local adapter and voila, back in business. No idea what I did, but things work.

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42Comments

  1. 1.

    morzer

    August 29, 2010 at 11:02 am

    Check and see whether you recently updated anything. That might be the explanation for your sudden disconnect. If there are any candidates, see if you can roll-back your system to before the updates.

  2. 2.

    jwb

    August 29, 2010 at 11:03 am

    I wish I’d chosen this weekend for a media blackout! You chose well.

  3. 3.

    Hal

    August 29, 2010 at 11:03 am

    Number one question we use to ask in my old IT/Helpdesk days:

    Is it plugged in? That, and “make sure the caps lock isn’t on” worked at least 75% of the time.

  4. 4.

    Mr Furious

    August 29, 2010 at 11:03 am

    Retire it and stick with your Mac?

    [/obligatory flame war ignition]

  5. 5.

    Roger Moore

    August 29, 2010 at 11:05 am

    Any ideas what I can do with my Windows 7 machine for it to recognize my modem?

    Get a real operating system?

  6. 6.

    burnspbesq

    August 29, 2010 at 11:09 am

    Right-click on the wireless icon in the lower right corner and choose repair.

  7. 7.

    Kristine

    August 29, 2010 at 11:20 am

    Shut everything down–including removing any back-up batteries from your modem–then wait 30 minutes and power up sequentially: modem, router, PC/Mac. That’s what the techfolk tell me to do when my internet connection goes wonky.

    The following applies to my Mac stuff, but it may work for PC routers, etc, as well. A few months ago, when I lost my wireless connectivity and couldn’t get it back no matter what, I took my Extreme Base Station to the local Genius Bar assuming it was gebusted. The Genius Bar genius simply did a hard reset, and advised that I do so annually because repeated/long-term connectivity can gum up the works–my words, not his–over time. He also advised sequential shut down/start up 2x a month, but I’ve been bad and haven’t done that.

  8. 8.

    Mr. Blink

    August 29, 2010 at 11:21 am

    Does your desktop PC connect via wired or wireless to your router?

    First thing would be to bring up a command prompt (start->run->cmd->(enter))

    type in: ipconfig
    hit enter

    Look at your IP address. If it starts with 169, your pc is not getting an IP from your router. If it starts with 10 or 192, it’s most likely getting an IP. If it is, go back to the command prompt.

    Type: ping google.com
    Hit enter and see if it responds. If it does, you probably have a browser (or proxy) issue. If it does not, try pinging the IP address of your router (when you did IPCONFIG, it will be the default gateway IP address). If that responds, it may be a DNS issue.

    In either case, we will need to do more testing. I sent you an email if that would be easier.

  9. 9.

    Frazzle

    August 29, 2010 at 11:26 am

    Depends on what’s wrong.

    Is it connected to the network but just can’t reach the internet? Then maybe the default gateway is goofed. Try disabling the re-enabling the network connection.

    Is it giving a message that there is limited connectivity? Likely didn’t get assigned a routable ip address by the modem. Try the solution above, and if that fails, power down and power up the modem/router.

    I would start with that.

  10. 10.

    Vince CA

    August 29, 2010 at 11:27 am

    First off, if the laptop has wireless, then your desktop is also not likely connecting to your modem. Your modem is probably connected to a wireless/wired router, and your desktop is physically plugged into that.

    Without actually being there… Was it recently hot? A lot of my equipment gets into a bad state after a heatwave. Wireless works, wired doesn’t e.g. If I take the router and modem down for a few minutes (I’ve even iced it, careful with that) and plug them back in, everything comes back up normally.

    I doubt it’s the desktop, unless it’s ethernet card is dead. Is it ethernet or wireless, and is it it’s own card or built into the mainboard?

  11. 11.

    Ash

    August 29, 2010 at 11:31 am

    I moved to DC a few weeks ago to start grad school. But I haven’t left the roughly 2 mile area around my house/school yet. I feel like a spinster.

  12. 12.

    scav

    August 29, 2010 at 11:32 am

    Ah, the eternal reboot fix. The little black dress of computing.

    Theme of the day is clearly break-down, although it’s a strong contender for theme of the week / month / fortnight / eon . . Still, I take what minor amusement I can in the Catholic hierarchy getting caught at it again, this time on tape . . . (I mean, speaking of eternal verities.)

  13. 13.

    Amanda in the South Bay

    August 29, 2010 at 11:33 am

    Be a cool kid and switch over to Ubuntu.

  14. 14.

    SimplyOn

    August 29, 2010 at 11:33 am

    Unplug power to modem and router for 10 seconds and then replug. Works most of the time.

  15. 15.

    paradox

    August 29, 2010 at 11:34 am

    I am sorely disappointed with Windows 7, either that or the Dell environment barf of it, or both.

    Sleep freezes the machine. Walking away and having it fade freezes the machine. The clunky hibernate functionality works.

    Livid, I called Dell and they said they’d walk me through a new bios. Fuck me, I’m as likely to do that as have the son of a bitch walk me through a prostate exam, spend hours on that procedure that I’ve never done before when all I want to do is throw it through the window? Windows that, motherfuckers.

    I have to give the machine up for at least half a day for a local shop to update the bios. Ultimately I’m a software/formatting web guy, my knowledge is there, I depend on my platforms and servers to fucking work and serve, thanks a lot, Bill and Steve. Idiots.

    [sigh] We’ve come so far, you know?

  16. 16.

    Brick Oven Bill

    August 29, 2010 at 11:35 am

    Our soldiers invade and occupy two Muslim-dominated countries half way around the world and somehow, in white America’s eyes, we are being taken over by the Muslims.

    Why don’t white Christians just move to their countries to live and take over? We way outnumber them.

  17. 17.

    John Casey

    August 29, 2010 at 11:38 am

    1. Unplug the computer to router connection, wait 2 seconds, plug it back in. I have to do this every time I restart my computer. I don’t know why, but it works.

    2. If 1 doesn’t do it, try plugging into a different socket on your router; sometimes they go bad, and a different socket will work.

  18. 18.

    mclaren

    August 29, 2010 at 11:44 am

    The first thing you need to do is reset your modem. Then get into the command line on your computer and do ping http://www.google.com. If you can ping out, then you’re able to connect. If you can’t ping out, you’ve got other issues. On the control panel, disconnect from the internet and reconnect, or alternatively from the command line do ipconfig/release and then ipconfig/renew.

    If none of that works, you may have a fried broadband modem. In that case, time to call your ISP.

    The real solution to these kinds of problems, of course, is to ditch the misbegotten Vista or Windows 7 and go back to Windows XP. Both Vista and Windows 7 have known systemic networking problems.

  19. 19.

    Origuy

    August 29, 2010 at 11:45 am

    @Brick Oven Bill: Who are you, what did you do to the real BoB, and can you do it to Pancake?

  20. 20.

    Cat Lady

    August 29, 2010 at 11:45 am

    @Brick Oven Bill:

    Wow. That makes total sense. WTF BOB?

  21. 21.

    Maude

    August 29, 2010 at 11:46 am

    @Amanda in the South Bay:
    Works for me where I tech. it is such a relief to sit down at one of the Ubunts after the MACs and Windows.
    At home, stuck with xp cause of dial up company won’t do Ubuntu. F’tards. But it work.
    If I had Win 7, I’d go to Network Connections and see if there is a not working symbol. You can try to reset the connection.
    Look at Device Manager and see if the driver is okay.
    Use the laptop.
    I would do a dual boot with Win 7 and Ubuntu. If nothing else, you’d know if it was the os or not.
    I hate Uncle Bill.

  22. 22.

    wesindc

    August 29, 2010 at 11:47 am

    I agree with #8 you first need to find out if your PC is even talking to the router. If you do get an IP address back outside of 162 but still cannot ping http://www.google.com it could be a DNS issue. If you can ping 72.14.204.103 (one of google.com’s IP’s) then its DNS issues.

    Try running the following from the command prompt:

    ipcofnig /flushdns

  23. 23.

    jwb

    August 29, 2010 at 11:51 am

    @Cat Lady: It’s obviously not the real fake BoB. Real fake BoB is often amusing, but never makes sense in this way.

  24. 24.

    Roger Moore

    August 29, 2010 at 11:53 am

    @paradox:

    I have to give the machine up for at least half a day for a local shop to update the bios. Ultimately I’m a software/formatting web guy, my knowledge is there, I depend on my platforms and servers to fucking work and serve, thanks a lot, Bill and Steve. Idiots.

    I hate to defend Microsoft, but you can’t blame them for problems with the BIOS. BIOSes are written by motherboard manufacturers, and from what I’ve read- mostly in excerpts from LKML- they’re almost universally broken in one way or another, and new versions with new bugs are coming out all the time. The OS writers are always playing catchup trying to write workarounds for BIOS bugs. That’s part of the price you pay for having such a wide-open hardware platform, and avoiding those kinds of problems is a big reason that Steve Jobs is so fixated on controlling the Mac platform.

  25. 25.

    gnomedad

    August 29, 2010 at 12:02 pm

    I have to unplug ethernet from my new Win7 machine while booting or it won’t talk to the internet (inter-machine networking is OK). If anyone recognizes this scenario and has a tip, I’d be grateful.

  26. 26.

    lamh31

    August 29, 2010 at 12:07 pm

    Good morning cheres!!!!

    Down here in new Orleans is gonna be Katrina all day with president Obama speaking thus afternoon I think. If y’all could, I wish y’all could watch the local programming for a real on the ground updates on how the city recovery is really going, skip the “disaster porn” that the MSM. Personally, I’m getting ready to go out into the city to visit anyone I can in the next 24hours.

    If there is one thing I hope people get out of the coverage today, is how the bp oil spill is/was a false comparison to the bush Katina fiasco! Billions of dollars in damages, 1800 people died here and along the gulf coast and that doesn’t even include those who died indirectly from Katrina, i.e. suicide, Katrina related violence, stress, PTSD, etc.

    The bp spill was an environmental catastrophe, but when looking back ya gotta ask yourself: “how again is the bp spill obama’s Katrina”

    it’s a lazy comparison .

    I’m out.

  27. 27.

    handy

    August 29, 2010 at 12:11 pm

    @Roger Moore:

    That’s part of the price you pay for having such a wide-open hardware platform, and avoiding those kinds of problems is a big reason that Steve Jobs is so fixated on controlling the Mac platform.

    Wrestling to get a working, bootable “Hackintosh” on my grey box a few months ago, I have to say that Jobs is rather astute on this one. Even when I finally got the thing running, it’s hard for me to explain it but it only kind of felt like a Mac.

    BTW, what the hell is up with these ads here in CA scaring the old people about Barbara Boxer cutting Medicare?

  28. 28.

    Douglas

    August 29, 2010 at 12:16 pm

    @scav:
    Fookin’ Bruges

    (yeah, like 3 people got that one…)

    Anyway, on topic, the usual dance (check if the connection to the router works (ping the router’s IP) – if that works it’s probably an DNS/config error), else check if the card/built-in chip works under windows (LEDs/whether it’s present in the device list), (check with another OS (linux livedisk)), if it’s there check the config and try anotehr cable) should work.

  29. 29.

    handy

    August 29, 2010 at 12:26 pm

    (yeah, like 3 people got that one…)

    A shame, too. Because it’s like the only really good thing Colin Farrell has ever done.

  30. 30.

    Roger Moore

    August 29, 2010 at 12:31 pm

    @handy:

    Wrestling to get a working, bootable “Hackintosh” on my grey box a few months ago, I have to say that Jobs is rather astute on this one.

    There’s more to it than that. Locking the OS to the platform also reduces development costs (since there’s less hardware to accommodate) and lets Apple charge a substantial premium for Apple branded hardware that will run OSX. The difficulty getting the OS up on non-Apple hardware has a lot to do with the desire to keep it locked to relatively high margin Apple hardware.

    BTW, what the hell is up with these ads here in CA scaring the old people about Barbara Boxer cutting Medicare?

    Do you really need to ask? Carly wants to get her Senate seat, and she doesn’t really care what she has to do to get it. Besides, she can fall back on the Republican half-truth that a vote for ACA was a vote to cut Medicare, since it cut into the corporate giveaway that was Medicare Advantage. It doesn’t matter that doing so didn’t hurt Medicare patients, since we all know that the highest purpose of any government program is to enrich Corporate America, not help the little people.

  31. 31.

    You Don't Say

    August 29, 2010 at 12:40 pm

    For those wondering yesterday about the attendance count for Beck-a-thon: 87,000, according to CBS, which commissioned an estimate.

    http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20014993-503544.html

  32. 32.

    Peter J

    August 29, 2010 at 12:40 pm

    Shouldn’t the title for this post have been “…but Wireless Is Alive”, considering the title of the post just below this?

  33. 33.

    handy

    August 29, 2010 at 12:51 pm

    @Roger Moore:

    I guess it goes without saying but I find it pretty craven that Repubs are running on “Teh scary soshulist Boxer is gonna take away yer Medicare” when they are the party that have been trying to kill it for decades.

  34. 34.

    hidflect

    August 29, 2010 at 1:03 pm

    @morzer:

    Dang! Stole the tech tip from my fingers. W7 helpfully updates your network card adapter to something more agreeable to M$’s liking. Roll it back!

  35. 35.

    hidflect

    August 29, 2010 at 1:04 pm

    @gnomedad:
    see my post above.

  36. 36.

    Roger Moore

    August 29, 2010 at 1:11 pm

    @handy:
    Do you really expect Carly Fiorina to display the tiniest bit of shame? This is a candidate who’s running as an experienced corporate CEO even though her tenure at HP was one epic fail after another. I think her strategy is to go on the attack as much as possible, since her record is clearly indefensible.

  37. 37.

    Joey Maloney in Paradise

    August 29, 2010 at 1:43 pm

    @Kristine:

    The Genius Bar genius simply did a hard reset, and advised that I do so annually because repeated/long-term connectivity can gum up the works—my words, not his—over time.

    This is the most annoying thing with my Mac’s wireless. My provider kind of sucks so it’s not unusual for my connection to go down 3 or 4 or 10 times a day for a few minutes to an hour. When that happens I just switch to one of the many open connections in my building and leech until mine comes back up.

    But there’s some kind of memory leak in the Airport connection manager. You switch connections enough times and it hangs with the Clown Anus of Death. And when that happens you can’t do a software restart, you have to do a physical reboot. And every time I do that there’s a small but nonzero chance it will fuxx0r something important in the OS.

  38. 38.

    asiangrrlMN

    August 29, 2010 at 2:03 pm

    Call my techie brother. That always works for me.

  39. 39.

    gnomedad

    August 29, 2010 at 2:30 pm

    @hidflect:
    Hot damn! That seems to work. Rolled back the network card driver with one click. At least W7 facilitates doing this. Thanks!

  40. 40.

    bago

    August 29, 2010 at 2:33 pm

    Tech threads like this tend to annoy, as there is a bunch of “homespun wisdom” that gets bandied about, by people that obviously have no idea of what they are talking about, and wouldn’t know an OSI model from a hole in the ground. However, since you’re running win7, the repair connection wizard will do 95% of any suggestions offered here, including disabling and re-enabling the NIC.

    This is a geek, actually recommending a wizard.

  41. 41.

    Douglas

    August 29, 2010 at 2:54 pm

    @bago:

    You forgot the people who then proceed to insult one Layer 8 instance or another.

  42. 42.

    gnomedad

    August 29, 2010 at 3:11 pm

    @bago:

    However, since you’re running win7, the repair connection wizard will do 95% of any suggestions offered here, including disabling and re-enabling the NIC.

    Tried that repeatedly. I musta been part of the 5%.

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