Help!

[jeffus]

Wifey brought home corporate laptop last night. We yanked the Ethernet cable from the old desktop (while it was off), popped it into the laptop, fired-up the laptop, and things worked just great.

She finishes up, we connect the Ethernet cable back to the old desktop, and turn it on. Says Plug & Play configuration error F1 to continue, F2 for set-up.

I reset the cable modem and router (thinking the router still had the IP address from the laptop maybe?). Still no luck.

Tried a system restore to yesterdays config. Nothing.

Too late to think straight, we gave-up and went to bed.:rolleyes:

Any suggestions?

The laptop ran Cisco VPN client. Desktop trying to fix runs WinXP. I think I have the drivers for the desktop's NIC card somewhere.

[DarthDaddy]

I am not an expert, but when I have home network errors I need to do the following. (In ORDER)

1. Unplug Modem
2. Unplug Router
3. Power Down PC's
WAIT A MINUTE OR SO.
4. Repower Modem... Wait.Wait.Wait... (All Green Lights)
5. Repower Router
6. Restart main pc
7. Restart second pc

Then all is well for my troubles...

[Mark B.]

Call IT dept.

[craigbass76]

Unless you have so weird spyware/virus problems that only took effect after a reboot, or your nic decided that now was the time to shit the bed, I'd say Darth Daddy's right and do what he said.

[jeffus]

Yup, did DD's advice....Nothing.

Maybe we knocked the NIC card out of whack or loosened something when we moved the desktop.

I'll have to crack it open and re-install later.

[Weston]

We did that once with wife's laptop and had to call our phone company to get it fixed (DSL). I don't remember any of the details though

[craigbass76]

Did you try a different router port? Did you try plugging the computer directly into the cable modem?

That problem's weirder the more I think about it.

[Weston]

According to my wife, what happened to us is when we disconnected the cable to the router and plugged in her laptop it erased the IPO address from our computer. Then called the phone company and got things straightened out. Took a few hours though :rolleyes:

[craigbass76]

That is one of the most retarded things I ever heard. Why does the phone company care which computer is plugged into the internet, so long as there's only one at a time?

[sao95]

go to device manager and see if it says your ethernet card is working correctly

[jeffus]

It says it's not working correctly. I was going to remove it and re-install.

[sao95]

must have gotten damaged when you moved it, but ya I'd pull it out, blow the dust off and reinstall, might also check the driver, xp should have the right driver, but sometimes windows gets buggy....

[jeffus]

It seems the 1394 Host Controller is not working either....says it doesn't have enough resources...:shrug:

[seattle]

That error is a bios error. My guess it that your network card is loose. Open your computer up and check to make sure all your PCI/AGP cards are seated. If your network card in on the motherboard check cmos settings to make sure it is enabled.

[sao95]

could the cmos battery be going out?

[Weston]

That is one of the most retarded things I ever heard. Why does the phone company care which computer is plugged into the internet, so long as there's only one at a time?

You got me on that one. I have no idea how it works

[seattle]

You got me on that one. I have no idea how it works


It has to do with the MAC address of the network card. The cable company does it too. If you don't have a router the first device the DSL or cable modem sees is your pc and sometimes you have to call them and let them know if you change PCs or other devices. Most users have a router and you can hook up a bunch of computers.

[Weston]

Well that makes sense then, because at the time I think we thought the router wasn't working for the laptop and we decided to just plug it in directly to see if it would work. Since then no problems with the router and I'm not touching that cable :)

[jeffus]

Fixed it! All better.

2 cards were loose. Must have got knocked out of whack when we pulled the system out.

Very dirty too. Vacuumed a lot of dust out of there.

Thanks for the help!:D

[seattle]

Fixed it! All better.

2 cards were loose. Must have got knocked out of whack when we pulled the system out.

Very dirty too. Vacuumed a lot of dust out of there.

Thanks for the help!:D


Cool! That was my guess. Glad to hear it is working again.

[jeffus]

I can see what Weston was getting at....the cable modem gets an IP address from the cable company that you actually 'rent' for a week.

The router divvyies that up to how ever many ports assigning each PC its own address. If you swap out a pc suddenly, then the ip address attached to the old hardware goes with it. Introduce a new pc and the system is confused.

In the future, we'll buy a new Ethernet cable and hook wifey up to the unused port on the router.

Either way, that thing needed a good cleaning. Dust bunnies galore! :D

[tt3]

One of the few things I remember from my A+ cert days is you want to blow the dust out, not vacuum it up, something to do with static charge building and damaging some boards. Thats the only thing I can add to the topic. Glad it worked out for you Jeff!

[jeffus]

I would think blowing would suck more!

Why disperse a localized dust bunny so it could contaminate more components with a stream of ionized high pressure gas. When high pressure gas meets low pressure gas, there is lots of condensation (water).

Sucking should blow less!

Remove the bunnies! Save the PC!

Just wondering....

[sao95]

I always heard to use canned air as well, for the reason given. glad you got it fixed :)