Wierdest Problem Ever

M

MiG_Master

Geek Trainee
Ok, I'm going to try and explain this best I can, becuase it still confuses the hell out of me.

I'm visiting my parents for the week, so of course that means tech support time while I'm there. They tell me that the internet hasn't been working for a few days on their computer, they were waiting for me to come and look at it. (skip to bottom for summary)

Stage one: Windows XP is reporting 'limited or no connectivity on LAN', which I have only seen on wireless connections, and their connection is wired. So I check to see if the cables have come loose somewhere in the rat's nest behind the system. However, all the cables are plugged in, and when I plug my laptop into the router, everything works fine for it. So I do a quick check, running through all the ports on the router, and even changing the cabling. The laptop still works, the desktop doesn't. The modem, router, and cables are all fine.

Stage two: I disable the network device, then enable it again, which does nothing. I download the lastest drivers for the network device, thumb-drive them over to the desktopm, and install them. A quick reboot, and still nothing works. Before I try anything more drastic, I do a ping check. Ping cannot find any website, or even the 192.168.1.1 of the router. It doesn't timeout however, it says 'network name not found'.

Stage three: Time to get a bit drastic, I uninstall the network device, reboot and reinstall. Still nothing happening. At this point all my experiance is telling me that the network device itself is shot, and to hop over to the nearest Best Buy and replace it. So I go buy a new D-Link network card, and install it, double-checking that it's seated properly in the slot. Then I disable the previous network device on the BIOS, as it was built into the motherboard. I log into Windows, and....Nothing. Exactly the same symptoms as before, but with a totally new card. I run through everything in Stages 1-3 again, with all the same results.

Stage Four: Despair

Stage Five: I remember that my parents had a spyware problem a while back that I had to fix, and it gets me thinking that maybe there is some sort of malicous program blocking network access. So I download a copy of the Knoppix Live CD 3.7, and reboot with it in the drive. The Linux kernal boots fine, and in seconds I'm staring at the lovely penguin. However, Linux cannot find the network device either. I try both of them, alternatly enabling/disabling and installing/removing, until evey combination of the two devices has been tried. Linux still doesn't ping out to anything, or connect to anything at all.

Stage Six: I have checked everything else on the computer, the RAM with Memtest and the HD's with the Maxtor utility. They all report 100% functionality.

So... in summary:
Computer has no network connectivity.
It is not the modem
It is not the cables
It is not the router
It is not the ISP
It is not the network device drivers
It is not the network device
It is not a Windows problem, as it does not work when booted to Linux
It is not faulty RAM or HD's

HELP!
 
Alright, I'll attack the simple possibility first. You probably already thought of this, but was either card able to pull down a DHCP granted IP address? Were they configured for DHCP at all?

Now you said, "Linux [could not] find the network device either". Does that mean it had no connectivity, or that it actually didn't even load the kernel modules for the wireless adapters? If it was the latter, are you having an IRQ/DMA steering issue? If the hardware resource addresses are spoken for in the CMOS, you won't be able to allocate the resources necessary to get the card working in any OS. Check the BIOS and make sure the resources are not manually allocated for legacy use, or something of that nature.
 
Thank you for your reply, I'll try to answer as best as possible.
Both the on-board network device and the new card were configured for DCHP, and in Windows, the IP reported was a 169.x.x.x address. When Window's repair was tried, the message box said that the IP could not be renewed.
For Linux, the kernal loaded the ethernet controllers fine, and I tried to use netcardconfig to setup the card. It asked if the device used DCHP broadcast, I said yes, and the response was:
Code: 
Sending DHCP broadcast from device eth0
Operation failed
Failed.
I tried answering no to the DCHP broadcast question, and then manually input the IP address, Network Mask, Broadcast Address, Default Gateway and Nameserver. The response was:
Code: 
ifconfig eth0 192.168.0.101 netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast 192.168.0.255 up route add default gw 192.168.1.1
SIOCADDRT: Network is unreachable
auto lo eth0
Done.

I tried this with both devices, and the responses were the same.

As for checking the BIOS, the computer is one of those e-machines cheapies, and the BIOS is the most stripped-down version I've ever seen, with no options or settings for manully steering IRQ's. The only editable things are system clock, boot order, password, and on-board settings (audio and LAN, with the only choices being on or off).
 
Verify that the network subsystem is functioning. One way to do this is to ping your local loopback (127.0.0.1). If it replies, networking is at least working and we can narrow the issue.

At this point, to me it sounds like the motherboard may be part or all of the issue. Now that I know it's an eMachine, this seems even more likely. It sounds like the motherboard has some necessary resources reserved and it won't give them up. Try resetting the CMOS and see if you have better luck.
 
It's a long shot (and probably wrong given my limited computing knowledge)
but (I can feel the flames)

check that the network card is enabled in the Device Manager. That was the cause of all my networking problems, and I had similiar errors to you. Yes it was a stupid, simple mistake I know I know.

Hope this helps :)

*I'm meltingggg...*
 
Waffle said:
check that the network card is enabled in the Device Manager. That was the cause of all my networking problems, and I had similiar errors to you.
Click to expand...
He already tested it in Linux too, so that rules that completely out.
 
Once again, thanks for the replies, and I'll try to give as much info as possible.
Anti-Trend said:
Verify that the network subsystem is funcitoning. One way to do this is to ping your local loopback (127.0.0.1). If it replies, networking is at least working and we can narrow the issue.
Click to expand...
Yes, the loopback interface does ping, in both XP and Linux. I did test this originally, but I didn't know if it meant anything. Shoulda mentioned it.

Anti-Trend said:
It sounds like the motherboard has some necessary resources reserved and it won't give them up. Try resetting the CMOS and see if you have better luck.
Click to expand...
It's an Intel 845GVSR. I'm going to flash the BIOS in a few minutes, I'll let you know how that goes. If that doesn't work, I'll try resetting the CMOS. Of course, as I was looking at the warrenty card, it expired on Feb 28/05. Lucky me.
 
Well that didn't go well. eMachines has loaded a custom BIOS to the board, which means that none of the Intel BIOS will update overtop, as they don't recognize it. I tried both the express method (from within XP), and the boot-disk method, neither of which worked. A check of the machines BIOS version number against the list of Intel BIOS version numbers shows it's a non-standard number, even though it's an Intel-branded board. No luck there.
I reset the CMOS by pulling the battery for 30 sec. When it booted, it asked for the time, and the system clock read Jan 1/02. I reset the clock, but once booted to XP, the network was still toast.
 
Well, it seems that I posted too soon.
I first booted to XP after I cleared the CMOS, and that didn't work. However, right after that, I tested the system with the Knoppix Live CD, and it worked. Detected and configured right after kernal decompress, and a quick check with Konqueror shows a solid connection to the net. However, XP still does not.
Unless anyone has an alternative, I'm going to reinstall a clean version of XP tomorrow, and see if that can fix it for good.

The only thing left to ask is: What the hell caused this? It required a CMOS reset, and still doesn't work in XP.
 
MiG_Master said:
...The only thing left to ask is: What the hell caused this? It required a CMOS reset, and still doesn't work in XP.
Click to expand...
I don't know what the catalyst was, but apparently your BIOS had reserved some system resources and would not release them. This could be caused by adding new hardware then removing it again. Or, it could just be due to sloppy programming in the eMachines BIOS. My guess'd be a little of both. Glad you got it solved! Good thinking with the bootable Linux, that really helps to limit the variables.

All the best,
-Anti-Trend

P.S. - The reason XP doesn't work is because it is expecting certain resource addresses, and it's probably getting different ones. You can probably fix it by uninstalling and reinstalling the hardware in question.

-AT
 
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