New home wireless network problem

[Guy Handley_1]

I installed a wireless net at home. I have a Microsoft router, model MN700. I have a laptop running XP and it works fine. I have a secondary desktop running Windows ME and now running fine with a wireless connection. My problem is my primary desktop. It is hard wired to the router via ethernet. It runs Windows ME also. Prior to installation, the primary desktop worked fine on my dsl connection. Now, the system indicates that it recognizes the network and seems to be connected but my internet explorer will not work on this desktop whereas it works fine on the two other machines. I tried a couple of ethernet cards (microsoft and linksys) but still no good. I think the ethernet connection b/t the router and desktop is fine though. I deleted the old dsl connection software from the desktop since it is now connected to the router via ethernet vs before having a direct USB connection to dsl modem but no good. When I click internet explorer, it lists the correct home page but gives me Page cannot be displayed message. Same happens when I enter any web address. So somehow, I have nonfunctional internet explorer even though the desktop seems properly connected to the router and therefore to the dsl. I have the old Dell ME disc and I actually have an XP upgrade disc if those are needed. Help me! Thanks.

[Ernest Ford]

Try to ping a website from one of the working systems, make a note of the ip address.

Try to ping the same system from your primary desktop, both by ip address and by URL.

If you can ping by ip but not by URL the problem is with the DNS config on the host.

Use winipcfg to determine what ip settings the system is seeing? Pay close attention to the DNS entries - compare these to the settings of a working system.

[Guy Handley_1]

Mr. Ford,
Sorry, posted wrong place. Please define ping and clarify your answer in more basic terms for a novice -

[Ernest Ford]

Guy,

Ping is a tool that allows you to determine if the communication path between two network devices exists - for windows go to a command prompt (Start/Run and CMD for XP or Command for ME) and type ping followed by the URL of the website. As an exampe to ping yahoo you would type "ping www.yahoo.com" and you'd get back a response showing how long it took for the message to leave your computer, travel accross the internet to the yahoo site and return. It could also give you a timed out response meaning a response was never recived from the yahoo site.

Possible reasons for this would be - the yahoo server is broken (not very likely) your system isn't connected to the internet or doesn't know how to reach the yahoo site.

In the response you should see what we call the ip address of the site - in this case 216.109.117.107 or something similar. This is the actual address of the yahoo server and not the URL (universal resouce locater) that you typed in because it's easier to remember - www.yahoo.com. You can ping both by URL (ping www.yahoo.com) or by IP (ping 216.109.117.107) - if you ping by URL first it will tell you the ip address that matches the URL

I need you to go to one of the working systems and ping a website to make sure you can reach it from your network and then go to your non-working system and try to ping the same site using the ip address first - if you get a response (other than request timed out) try to ping it using the URL.

Let me know what happens.

You can look at the ip settings that your ME systems use to communicate by going start/run and then entering "winipcfg". This starts a configuration utility that shows you the ip address, subnet mask, default gateway and DNS server settings being used at the time. There will also be buttons that let you determine whether these are manually entered or automatically set. With the exception of the ip address these should be identical for the two systems running ME. My suspicion is that the non-working system has one or more manually set items that may be incorrect.

[Guy Handley_1]

Thanks for the clarification on pinging. I could not ping even from the operational computers on the network, assuming I am doing it right. I click start/run cmd on the xp computer and then enter pingwww.yahoo.com or ping followed by the series of numbers. On both, I get a message that this is not a recognized command. Note though that the computer works fine in other respects with good internet access. To further complicate, my main desktop that had the original problem now will not even startup. I think I need to reinstall the operating system from CD. I'll post again as I work on this and welcome any input in the meantime

[Ernest Ford]

You need to put a space between ping and www.yahoo.com like this "ping www.yahoo.com" without the quotes of course.

[Ron Kinner]

Compare on XP the info from
start/run/cmd
ipconfig /all

with that of ME
start/run/command
winipcfg

Both should show the same gateway and mask as well as same DNS server. In not, that's your problem and you need to open Networking in the Control Panel and select the protocol with TCP/IP then properties and make sure it is set to Get IP address and DNS address automatically.

Ron