Home Network Troubles

[darkwaffle]

Ok, so our home network is composed of a laptop, an aging PC, and one only 2 month old PC. These are all hardwired to our Belkin router which then connects to our cable modem and to our Comcast HSI connection.

Just last night the new PC lost it's network connection; after about two months of running in the same setup it is now without any problems really. So far, I've diagnosed a few things. The router is not to blame, nor is the modem. The router isn't because I tried connecting the new PC directly to the modem without passing through the router and it still had no connection. The modem isn't to blame because the laptop and the older PC are still connected. I also tested the ethernet cable the connects the newer PC by trying the laptop on it, and it was able to connect to the internet. So I think I've narrowed it down to either some sort of software problem (I ran Spybot:S&D and Ad-Aware, nothing major) or the network connection on the newer PC. Just to mention, the newer PC's connection is the onboard connection found on the DFI LANPARTY UT nF3 motherboard.

Before I off and purchase a network card or maybe return the board, does anyone have any ideas? I'd like to think I'm good with computers, but heaven knows it's so easy to miss something with them. Thanks for your input.

 

[JackMDS]

At the end of thispage you would find few things that you can try.

I.e. LSX Fix, Winsock, Resting the TCP/IP Stack.

Link to: Basic Steps in cleaning Internet "Junk".

:sun:

 

[amdskip]

Run winsock fix first.

 

[darkwaffle]

Well, I ran WinSockFix, LSP-Fix, and reset the TCP/IP stack. Still no connection. I also re-installed the Ethernet port's drivers through the nVidia 5.03 System Driver Package found on DFI's site. No luck with that either. Right now I'm reading Microsoft's website to see if I find anything relevant. Thanks for the suggestions so far guys.

Edit: I don't know what this means unfortunately, but after trying the "Network Diagnostic" found in Start>Help and Support>Use tools to...>Network diagnostic everything came out fine. The only part that didn't look kosher was the "DHCPServer = 255.255.255.255(Invalid IP Address)" message that I found in the results. Is that normal?

Update: After fooling around with ipconfig and netdiag, I've identified that I have this;
"If your local IP address is returned as 169.254.y.z with a subnet mask of 255.255.0.0, the IP address was assigned by the Automatic Private IP Addressing (APIPA) feature of Windows XP Professional. This assignment means that TCP/IP is configured for automatic configuration, that no DHCP server was found, and that no alternative configuration is specified. This configuration has no default gateway for the interface."
As pasted from http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314067 . However...I don't know what to do about it. The site doesn't say anything like "If you have this; go here." or the like.

 

[darkwaffle]

Ah! Fixed it. Found out from the dfi-street forums that this problem is fixed by finding the MAC Address located north of the AGP Slot and putting that into the BIOS. :thumbsup: