A really bizarre problem:
After the outage on the EE network the other day, my router then started to play up, only allowing access to a few UK website home pages. (I am with EE/Orange on both mobile & landline / broadband).
The help desk conclude that it was the router at fault having done a number of 'ping tests' and they have duly sent me a new router. It's all set up and is running normally, allowing all of my computers and a number of mobile phones in the house to access the internet. However, the laptop running Vista belonging to the Italian lodger here, now can access the router (the router diagnostics page is showing her computer) but she cannot get past the router to the internet. We ran a Windows diagnostic and it says to unplug the router, turn off the computer, reboot both and all should work. Needless to say it doesn't. She says she has not altered anything from the time when it could connect via the previous router. I will check the boxes in the advanced internet options menu, but am wondering if there is anything obvious which I have missed?
The laptop finds the router, the router recognises the laptop but either settings in the laptop prevent it from going further or within the router. I have tried disabling her antivirus, firewall and internet security settings, but nothing changes! Five hours later and I am still b*ggering about with it!

Just in case you've been hit with some malware, see my post 10481 above.

Do the download and run a scan.

Harry, I had a doc, which i used to renew the IP number with the router but i must have deleted it. I googled this and found how to do it and got connected.

Thanks guys. Have continued my efforts and found that though the router recognises the laptop, the laptop seems to connect to the router but doesn't seem to actually recognise it. So in Network settings it picks up the network but then doesn't want to assign a name to the network device.
Am trying to get lodger to test it with another network at Uni so that we can establish whether it is the WiFi card at fault or the router.
Driving me nuts! ....especially as all the Windows diagnostics are in italian!

It sounds like the laptop's NIC might still be configured to connect to the old router, Harry.

As a start, I'd check if it's using DHCP by running "netsh interface ip show config" from the command line.

Thanks. Will give it a try.

Actually, depending on her OS, your lodger might not have the network shell tool installed so that command might not do anything. If not, 'ipconfig /all' from the commmand prompt will also tell her if the NIC has DHCP enabled. If she doesn't want to use the command prompt, there'll be a GUI to do the same thing.

Thank you. I have the laptop and will check myself, though need to be on a Vista machine to compare the settings. Have already tried your original command and it shows the WiFi, LAN and another configuration, but all is in italian (though I put in the command in english). I need to sit and compare the screens as the info is not in the same order as the my english version, though much of it is common sense when comparing.

Most seem the same. DHCP is enabled as is auto configuration.
The only two differences are the last two digits of the IP address and a number of digits in the physical address.
DNS, DHCP, Lease dates, subnet mask, default gateway all the same.

If you've got the IP address of your lodger's NIC, can you see that IP address in the list of attached devices on your router's homepage?

Try this harry.,.

http://social.technet.

Harry,

Probably a really silly question, but I am presuming that you're aware the LAN SSID and password will have changed when you changed the router?

On the topic of DNS settings......

The one given to you by your ISP may not actually be the fastest.

It's fairly easy to change to one that IS the fastest and has given the fastest results under test.

If you want to play around with your DNS and set something better up for yourself (once you've actually got at least one DNS up and running properly, Harry) then have a look at a little piece of software called:

DNS Jumper. (The latest version is v1.0.6)

I moved from my ISP's DNS settings first to Google's and then on to 'UK - Internap'.

My DNS settings are now: 212.118.241.1 (15 milliseconds response time ) with a backup setting of 212.118.241.2 (16 milliseconds response time). These are reasonably good and from the UK. Sometimes a test from another place might show, say 8 ms or 6 ms, but my settings will do me fine.

Right, I am booted up on a Vista machine now with Ethernet cable, so should chug along quickly.
Yes, I changed and issued new password and Network name to everyone here. That's the strange thing. All mobile phones, PC's and laptops (English, Spanish and Italian) connected easily with a new password and router. Just this one laptop which is not behaving!
Yes, the router homepage shows the IP address as does the Command Prompt (Prompt dei Comandi). Both are the same.

Though I have just noticed from the router homepage that the connection is constantly dropped and picked up again. Router is 6' away with clear line of sight.

Also, when I switch on the laptop now and it has tried to connect to the router, it causes the router to hang and I have to reboot the router to get it to connect to the internet again.

Harry,

It's not beyond the realms of possibility that there's an IP conflict somewhere. My daughter's laptop always used to conflict with another device for some unknown reason.

The only effective solution that we could muster was to take that machine off DHCP and assign it a static IP address outside of the block being used by the other DHCP clients. It's easy enough to do, and there are no shortage of instructions on the interweb that can be found by Googling some simple terms such as 'assign static ip vista'.

The downside of this is that it can be a headache if your lodger goes to uni or an internet cafe, for instance, and finds herself unable to hook onto another LAN.

Incidentally, what make router do you have (both old and new), and what lifetime do the leases have (conflicts could/would occur if a lease expires)?

And I thought girls weren't technically minded! :-)

Old router was a Netgear N600.
New one is a Bright Box (as supplied by Orange/EE).

I really appreciate your assistance, but I think we need to find out if it connects to another WiFi network and I know she takes the laptop to the Library and to Uni, so that is her next task. As everything else connects here, I am reluctant to mess around too much with the router settings just to accommodate her. As with most students, she uses the laptop just about anywhere that she can find free Wifi, so it's got to work no matter where she is.

I think I might do a factory reset on the old router and see if it works as I wonder if it was her laptop which was corrupting the router in the first place.

Well you wouldn't need to mess around with the router in any way in order to assign a static IP to your lodger's NIC, Harry. That alteration is something that's done solely on the laptop itself, and it's easy enough to reverse the change and re-enable DHCP once you've done some testing.

The other thing I probably should have asked is what wireless networking standard is the router broadcasting on (B, G, N or a mix)? That could be a possible cause of the problem if your lodger has an older machine. It might be worth temporarily lowering the standard to test if that improves things - you can always raise the standard back up again once you've done some testing.

Skinners,

You're right, most girls aren't technically minded. But you were forgetting that I'm both extraordinarily intelligent and naturally gifted in beauty.

:o)