@home and Windows 2000

[Sloakie]

@home tech support has been no help with this problem, they just say I shouldn't be having problems. If I wasn't taking a trial of the service I would have definitely cancelled my service.
Anyway, here's the problem. It apears that I'm connected to the network. I ran the diagnostic tool and I seem to be connecting to all the servers. The problem is that the only internet program I can use is IE5 (although the @home excite homepage doesn't load). All other internet applications, including email and news programs, won't connect. The only reason I think Explorer works is because I was able to specify the proxy address.

By the way, I had no problems for a month. But last week they added a new node to the system. Customer service says they switched me and I should have no problems.

So what's the deal? Are there any special services I should be running?
Thanks for your help.

 

[Looney]

No idea Sloakie... but we have a resident @home technician visiting these forums i believe, so maybe he can help you.

 

[Sloakie]

Another weird thing. For some reason I'm able to check my @home mail, but I have to be connected with my dial-up too.

 

[bigshooter]

do you have all the proper servers for your email and news servers? If they are not right, then you can connect to them, but the other programs are not configured right. You can get @home mail from their servers as long as you have an active internet connection. That's why it works with dial up. Just double check that you have the correct mail.xxx.xxx.xxx server in your mail program settings or news.xxxx.xxx.xxx in your news reader.

 

[Sloakie]

For the mail server I use "mail" and news "news". That's why I think it's strange that I can get mail. For some reason it's able to resolve the correct address when the dial-up is connected, but not when I'm just connected through the LAN alone.
I didn't have to specify http://proxy:8080 for my internet applications to work before. It was all automatic, but now I have to type it in. The problem is I can't do that for every program.

 

[imgod2u]

I've had problems with @home. I fixed it by specifying the ip, gateway, and dns manually instead of detecting automatically. You can call @home and ask them to tell you the info. This might solve it.

 

[PrinceofWands]

wow...all right, it could be a bizarre routing issue, but it sounds a lot more like a misconfigured suffix search order. I'm not a 2k expert so I'll be shooting from the hip here.

First of all no firewall or proxy software running in the background right? No routers or special services in use? Go ahead and specify all your information like imgod2u mentioned, if you don't have it all call tech support and get it.

In the tcp/ip configuration section should be an area talking about "append these dns specific search orders" or something similar. In this area you want the @Home domain specified. It should be an abbreviation for your city with a 1 after it, then your state, then home.com... for instance I live in vancouver WA so my domain is vncvr1.wa.home.com. Again tech support can provide this.

I believe in win2k there is another place you'll need this. By right-clicking my computer and choosing properties you should eventually find another section about suffix search orders, sorry, very late and my 2k box isn't up yet. Make that the same as in the tcp/ip area.

With all that specified you should try it again. If it still isn't working do this: Go to a command prompt and type 'ping mail'. Then press return. It should come back with 4 lines of returns from a specific ip address; write that ip address down. Then go into your mail client and for incoming and outgoing mail server substitute that ip for whatever you have in there. Try it again. If that still doesn't work post again or email me.

theprinceofwands@home.com

 

[Sloakie]

Here's the deal, they moved me to a new node some my IP addresses have changed but the DNSes haven't. I manually typed in the numbers I got from using ipconfig. Explorer didn't even work. I also tried pinging "mail" and using that address for mail. Nothing. I don't get it. It pings "mail", "news" and "www", but my programs can't access them.

I use to have black Ice running but I removed it when I started having problems.

 

[spidey07]

When you say you can ping mail and you configure your mail client with the actual IP address instead of the name you get nothing.

What exactly is the error message your mail client gives you?

I'd have to agree with PRINCE that it sounds like a domain suffix problem

EDIT - www.news.com does not respond to pings. This is normal.

 

[Sloakie]

It won't connect to mail because the connection times out. The same thing with the news server.
I think the people at @Home screwed something up when they added the new node. Because I didn't have any problems before.

If I uncheck "Append parent suffixes of primary DNS suffix", then I get "network unreachable"

 

[shadow]

sloakie - capture screens of all your config info (alt-PrintScrn) and link it here for us to see (if you're comfortable doing so - or email it to those who you trust), I have @home as well.

 

[PrinceofWands]

ouch, it's a toughie all right. Again, 2k is the hardest for me to troubleshoot due to my limited exposure. mac, 95/98 are easy...we could pull the stack, reinstall communications protocols, hack the reg to guarantee open ports and socks, a whole bunch of stuff, but with 2k I'm pretty stumped.

The absolute best test would be to have a tech come out, or a friend with a laptop or just another system (preferably running 98se since it's so easy to troubleshoot), and see if it can connect properly. It would narrow it down to the network config or your machine right away.

When I do take 2k calls I tend towards specifying all addresses rather than using any dhcp services because 2k expects dhcp systems to be true dhcp and ours is a hybrid. Also, although I've never taken a 2k call in a post firewall state, I've seen systems that we could not get to function no matter what suddenly start working after a clean reinstall of the os. Sounds odd, but windows sux and however it happens the os does sometimes lock out ports or services. This is a drastic step but if someone comes out and their system works fine then there really is no better choice.

As a side note, @Home proxies are totally irrelevant. They're really only a high access caching system, storing web pages. I never turn mine on due to page corruption in the cache process. If your system only functions with proxies turned on it's more than likely a system error, possibly related to firewall alteration of the registry or other vital data.

 

[Entity]

Sloakie,

FWIW, I'm experiencing a very similar problem. Location: Seattle. Tech support couldn't figure it out, and neiter can I (I can check mail, though, as long as I use the full mail server address, rather than just "mail&quot.

Rob

 

[Sloakie]

I guess more people finally started bitching because now they admit there might be a problem with the system.
Thanks for trying to help.