Network help needed desperately

[vraiblonde]

Here's what I did:

Running Win98 SE. The NIC is a D-link 530TX.

My cable connection was down so I installed AOL so I could dial up with my 56K modem until the cable came back. After installing, my computer kept shutting down spontaneously and having problems. So I uninstalled AOL. Then my cable came back up, but I couldn't connect anymore. Tried renewing and releasing the Ethernet card in IP Config and it wouldn't release - the AutoIP stayed at 169.whatever. When I click "renew" it times out and says "Error: DHCP server unavailable".

I've been working on this for three days now. This happened to me on another computer and I changed the I/O settings for the NIC adapter and it worked fine. Doesn't seem to be working this time around. I also uninstalled the NIC (physically took it out of the machine) and the adapters and reinstalled fresh - still no go.

The cable modem is recognizing that there's a connection to my computer - lights are on but no one's home. The NIC card power light is on. When I go into the registry to check the DHCP values, it's showing me a bunch of "fffff"s where I know numbers should be.

Can anyone help me? I'll be your slave for life!

 

[vraiblonde]

One more thing:

Larry and I are networked via a hub - everything's working fine for him, which tells me it's not the modem, the hub or the cable company causing the problem.

 

[Frank]

I started to check your problem, but I have to get back to work. But there was some good info on Google. If you've ever used it to search newsgroups, there's your solution. Go to groups.google.com and enter in cable failure and DHCP. You should find some good stuff.

 

[Heretic]

Ugh AOL use to "change" files so that no other service could be used. I'm not sure if it was intentional on their part or not (probably was). Im also not sure if they changed it in their newer versions.

AOL was notorious for their free account that you couldnt cancel when it came time to start paying so I wouldn't put anything past them.

 

[The Finman]

Yeah...I have had to fix several elderly peoples computers because they stuck that free 500 hours CD in their computer.

Since you are Windows 98 this might be fairly easy.

Instead of going through all the complex garbage, let's see if a simply registy restore will work.

Boot your computer up in DOS mode (if you don't command it to reboot in DOS mode, then simply hit the F6 key as your computer starts to boot and this should take you to C:\ prompt)

(*Note - DON'T USE the MS-DOS program that you can access in normal mode...be sure that you actually reboot your computer directly into DOS )

At the C:\ prompt type in this command exactly...

scanreg /restore

(*Note - Be sure to put a space in between scanreg & /restore)

Next hopefully you will have the option of going back several days...if this happened today thenm go back to yesterday (*Note - you will lose some of the todays data! so if you did something important then save it to a disk or upload it somewhere)

For more information on scanreg /restore check out this link

http://www.techcomplete.net/Scan_reg.htm

Hope this works

 

[vraiblonde]

Oops! I forgot to post that I solved my "problem". After I did everything I could think of, including (yes) reformatting my harddrive, I finally called the cable guys. Ryan the Great told me that they had recently upgraded their server (which is why I went down in the first place) and made it so there was only one IP address per location (my husband and I were sharing a connection through a hub). So I went out and bought a router and we're back in business. Moral of the story: it's not going to kill you to call tech support.

The good news is that I have a clean hard drive and while I was torn apart, decided to go to Win2000, which I love. It's like I've got a brand new computer! And I give to Win2000 (so far).

 

[Heretic]

Nothing runs like a computer with a fresh hard drive, sometimes its amazing how much performance you can gain from a reformat.

I have to agree about win 2000, XP is a whole other story though.

 

[Kizzy]

I made the awful mistake of upgrading my Windows 2K computer to XP. The first thing I did was put the darn thing back into clasic mode. Now that I am getting use to it, I like it much better! But 2K is much better than 98 SE. At least I think so.

 

[Oz]

GMP just did that in St. Mary's. Only 1 IP address, so your hub can't connect each computer directly, so you need a router.

I thought your problem would be related to AOL. When I tried to install AOL on my computer, I had to restore the system and start from scratch. As a result, I have AOL on one computer, and can't add it to the others because it porks the TCP/IP in my Registry. But, AOL "doesn't modify anything in Windows" according to AOL support! RIGHT!

Ok Vrai - I recognized Tipper (and thank you for changing that.) But, who's the new chick?

PS. Like my Ozz Pic?

 

[vraiblonde]

Yeah, I figured it was AO-Hell too. That's why I reformatted, trying to exorcise the demon.

I do love your Oz, Nodnarb - it is so YOU! My new evil vampire woman is the star of Clueless (how appropriate) and famous PETA-PITA, Alicia Silverstone! This is what the little phony looks like without her makeup. Let's give it up for the Max Factor corporation!!!

 

[Christy]

Windows 98? Good lord woman! Glad to see you upgraded! !

And all you XP haters, we've not had a bit of problems with XP so far, (other than GMP cable being behind the curve and not knowing STILL how to troubleshoot their own service if you're using XP), we've had it since January and I love it!

 

[Boogieman117]

Good Idea When You Get Cable Back:

Go Grab GoBack off of KaZaaLite.