windows problem
 

I have been having a hell of a time with my computer since I got back to school. I can't seem to get my computer to receive any data off of the campus network using Windows. I've spent half my time since I've been home trying to figure this out but nothing seems to be working. According to the network connections under the control panel my network connection is up and running. I would assume something is wrong with my network card but when I'm using Linux on the same machine I can access the network just fine.

I finally discovered an error message today when I tried to repair the connection, I got an error message that said their was a problem flushing the ARP cache. If anyone has any ideas that would be great.
I don't know what other information I can provide, my network card is an Intel proset 10/100. I also was connecting to the internet using a dialup connection when I was home but I deleted that connection after I started having problems.

take a look at this. which version of windows are you using? exact error message?

~james

I'm running Windows XP home with service pack 1 installed. THe exact error message regarding the arp cache was . The following steps of the repair operation failed: Flushing the ARP cache.


I think I may have figured it out, hopefully. I had bought a new sound card so I could play music with Linux and I just popped it out and now my connection is working. It doesn't exactly make any sense to me but hopefully it was the problem.

hunh. what sound card was it?

~james

It was a soundblaster 16pci card. Doesn't make a lot of sense. Windows never registered any hardware conflicts when I was having problems.

How do you know windows detected no hardware conflicts - details of why you know?

Okay so the sound card wasn't the problem anyways, I got back from class this afternoon and guess what my connection was doing exactly the same thing as before. So I guess I'll get to work using perths information. Hopefully I can solve it soon.

tw the only reason I assumed there was no hardware conflict, is becuase windows never said anything, and using device manager when looking at the details of the sound card no hardware conflict were present.

cam, for what its worth, the things i read at the ms support page indicated that the issue wasnt so much due to the nic, but more due to something wonky in the os. i would probably start by disabling startup items, uninstall/reinstall tcp/ip, stuff like that. i would also try reinstalling the nic driver, just to be safe. post whatever you find that fixes it. :)

~james

I've tried to do a little bit of that, so far with no luck, the fact that it worked when I took the sound card out makes this even stranger becuase that's all I did. The only good thing about this is that it's giving me motivation to get my sound card working through Linux.

So after about a week of trying to figure sound out on Linux I have sound. And after another couple hours of messing with it I can play mp3s. Damn I'm feeling good now. Now I just need to get my printer working and figure out how to burn cds and I'll be able to use Linux almost exclusivly.

What distro are you running?

I do know that in order to burn cd's with an IDE CD Burner, your kernel has to be compiled with SCSI emulation support, and not IDE CD-ROM support. That seems to be the only magic key, other than learning how to use mkisofs and cdrecord.

I'm running Redhat 8.0. I really havn't even looked anything about burning up so I'm starting from scratch this weekend.

Are there any good filesharing programs for Linux. I've looked a bit but if anyone has any suggestions they would be welcome. I'm also looking for a good ripper/encoder.

A few more months and I'll be completly rid of the beast of redmond.(at least at home)

It's funny, because after getting a Mac with Mac OS X, all the reasons to use Linux (except the "I'm too cheap to buy shit") are gone.

Really, you owe it to yourself to go play with one at an Apple store. Pick the brain of one of the employees on whatever you want. See the light. :)

When I rip cds, I use the script 'abcde', and I have it configured to use lame and cdparanoia.

If you use lame, remember that in addition to changing the bitrate, you also choose a 'quality value', from 1-10, which tells lame what algorithms to use when trying to approximate human hearing. Some are more effective than others, but the better they are, the slower they tend to be. The default is 5, but I use 2.

For filesharing on Linux, I use gtk-gnutella. But WinMX and Kazaa-Lite for Windows seem to be a bit more effective when looking for reasonably obscure titles.

Back to my Windows problem. I seems to have solved part of the network issue I was having before. I uninstalled all my protocols but TCIP and the connection seems to be working whenever I start my computer. Now I'm having the same problem after my computer has been on for a while. I cannot give any times because it only appears to stop working when I'm not using the computer. This also seems to be happening when I'm using Linux too.

I'm wondering if maybe this is a physical network card problem which could have occurred during the drive to and from home. We'll see what happens, hopefully I can find someone with a spare network card laying around.

Different chips start cutting out at different voltages. Strange things occur when things we take for granted start to change mildly. Intermittent failure is so typical of PSU problems and a few other sources. Is it the PSU? It could also be a number of other related problems. But this simple lesson about solving hardware intermittents from one who has been solving intermittents long before there were PCs. Take the power supply DC voltage measurements.

Not only must numbers be in spec, but some at the lower end of spec require further evaluation. Do not wildly replace a PSU or anything else until first establishing basic parameters. And do not use the motherboard based voltage monitor for a voltage measurement. That monitor is only relevant to detect changes - not reliable enough for actual measurements.

XP keeps system logs. What do they say?

New information on my problem. This weekend I couldn't get on the internet again, but I decided to try playing a game of risk over the dorm's network and it worked. So their is obviuosly not a problem with the network card but some software configureation that isn't working. Kind of strange, I'm still completely baffled but I'm dealing with it, it's really almost better as I spend about 1/4 of the time I used to on the Net.

Is the RISK connection TCP-IP based, or does it use NetBIOS/Windows networking stuff?

I don't believe you can remove TCP/IP in WinXP. You can reset it via Start > Run > cmd > netsh int ip reset logfilename.txt. Running it a second time will append the results in logfilename.txt.

Could also try uninstalling the NIC, and reinstall using the latest drivers for your card. Does another NIC give you the same problem? Also, sometimes Windows is a bit funny about which PCI slots the cards are installed in.

Okay, that looks better. %@^# brackets. Logfilename is whatever you want to call it. I call mine reset.txt.

actually it's an onboard NIC, intel 10/100 pro I believe, I can't remember the exact model number and I'm not at my comp right now. I'm actually planning on buying a new NIC today and hopefully installing tonight or tomorrow and seeing what happens with that.

I'll try your idea on resetting my TCI/IP hopefully that will do something new, I hadn't tried that before.

I'm starting to wonder if maybe it has something to do with DNS servers becuase phoenix just sits there saying "resolving host google.com" or whatever I type in as the address until it finally comes up with a can't find site message. I'm probably dead wrong on that but who knows. Linux has been giving me some of the same problems recently but I think that has more to do with me messing with my host name than anything.

So somehow I missed UT's post :(. The RISK connection is TCP/IP.

I bought a new NIC today and got it configured both in windows and Linux, now the real test, I'm going to work for a couple hours and hoping that when I get back I can still use the internet.

When you miss my messages YOU RISK PERIL! HEED my warning before it's TOO LATE!

OK.

If your card was able to do TCP/IP to the local network (the dorm might be one class C) but not to the net in general, that is more likely to be a settings problem than a problem with the card. The card is getting a lot done just to talk with other interfaces and that kinda rules out hardware.

But not completely! It might still come under the heading of Weird Things That Are Never Supposed To Happen.

The Cellar's own NIC had such an occurrence over the weekend, when it suddenly decided to quit routing altogether, although it reported no errors and reset properly through a reboot. It took a hard reset - turning the entire system off - to get it flying again. And all the while I was saying "...well here's something that shouldn't fix this problem."

Commodity hardware: all right-thinking people should hate it.

okay so I'm crossing my fingers, 2 hours at work and my internet worked when I got back without a reboot, hopefully this is a sign that my problem was with the NIC. I'll have to leave it on overnight and then try Windows tomorrow during the day to see if it's fixed but so far it's all good.

Overnight and still working this morning, I pretty sure I fixed it, still makes no since but hey I'm happy now, thanks everyone for your help.