LAN cables

[Spinney]

Computer working fine. Went out for a bike ride. Didn't switch anything off.

Came back, computer would no longer talk to the internet. Got out laptop (laptop is the only one with wireless) - laptop can talk to the internet OK via the wireless connection. Main computer cannot talk via the wire.

BT help chappie talked me through various things (including taking the wire connection out and swapping it end to end!). Nothing worked. He said I'd need to get a new cable.

Now this makes sense in terms of the symptoms - but I find it hard to believe* that a piece of wire that is only a few months old suddenly fails, without me touching it. Does this happen often?

I haven't got any spare cables with the right connectors at the ends to try a different cable. I suppose I can take the cable to my local computer shop** and ask them to test it.


(*I am prepared to be convinced by anyone that knows better!)
(** the equivalent of an LBS, NOT a PC world!)

 

[rusky]

they won't just fail like that.

If you have a maplin/toolstation/electrical wholesale near, just buy another cable. Even a 10m one should be around £5

What operating system are you running?

 

[qwiksilver]

goto>start>run

type cmd ,in the command console type "ping www.bbc.co.uk"9without speech marks) if you get like

Pinging www.bbc.net.uk [212.58.246.93] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 212.58.246.93: bytes=32 time=27ms TTL=52
Reply from 212.58.246.93: bytes=32 time=21ms TTL=52
Reply from 212.58.246.93: bytes=32 time=159ms TTL=52
Reply from 212.58.246.93: bytes=32 time=38ms TTL=52

Ping statistics for 212.58.246.93:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 21ms, Maximum = 159ms, Average = 61ms

then the connection is working fine and its the browser at fault,anything other like canot resvole host name means theres no connection to that pc

 

[rusky]

do the same but replace ping www.bbc.co.uk with ipconfig /all & post results here.

 

[qwiksilver]

lol or what rusky said but if you have a static ip and the pc has not been rebooted it will still give your static ip on windows xp anyways

 

[Spinney]

lol or what rusky said but if you have a static ip and the pc has not been rebooted it will still give your static ip on windows xp anyways

I have no idea what this means!

The PC is running Windows XP. Neither firefox or IE will connect, so I don't think it is the browser.

Doing what qwiksilver said the first time gets me 'Ping request could not find host www.bbc.co.uk'

ipconfig/all got me this

 

[qwiksilver]

try ipconfig/ renew as the ip address its giving you is a preset not actually from a router then try the ping or ipconfig/ all, if it cannot find the host the pc is not connected to the router, i doubt very much your cable has just broken on its own without being moved ,pulled etc but the ip renew may refresh the ip and it will connect to the router also there is no gateway ip which means the router is most definatly not connected .

 

[_aD]

Cables do, on the odd occasion, just "go wrong". It's very unlikely yours has, looking at your symptoms. Your computer can tell that it is physically connected to the router. Once that happens it sends a "DHCP" request to the router for an "IP address" - its unique identifier on the Internet. Think of it like the computer's own phone number.

It waits for a certain time (and this process should take a second, if that) and if it doesn't receive an answer it will automatically choose one in the 169.254 range, as yours has.

Your router is not responding to DHCP queries, or something on the PC is interfering with them. This may be outside the scope of BT's support and a local computer shop should be able to come out and fix it fairly quickly and easily.

 

[Norm]

Rebooting the router would be a quick'n'easy thing to try too, as they can be fickle to the vagaries of power spikes etc and it's just possible that's affected the wired but not wireless access.

Does the laptop have a wired network port? Can you try plugging the cable into that, in case the fault is within the desktop.

 

[Spinney]

I had rebooted the router a couple of times earlier in the whole process. No change.

Tried using the wire to the laptop, it would not connect - said 'connection failed with error 651'

Putting ipconfig/renew into the cmd window eventually brought up 'An error occurred while renewing interface local area connection: unable to contact your DHCP server. Request has timed out.

Thanks for trying to help - I think I will just take the cable into the local computer shop tomorrow and get them to test it. If the cable checks out I might have to take the computer/router to them!

 

[MacB]

assuming you've tried rebooting the PC itself then I would try going into your network connections, via control panel, and disable the LAN connection then re-enable it and run the repair option. If this sorts it then I'd also download Malwarebytes, free version, and run a detailed scan of your machine.

 

[Norm]

I suggested similar, Mac, but the latest update says it doesn't work in the lappie either.

 

[MacB]

I suggested similar, Mac, but the latest update says it doesn't work in the lappie either.

ta Norm, missed that...still very weird for a cable to just bug out like that, I'd maybe have concerns at the router end...still it'll all come out in the wash

 

[Norm]

I've got to agree with all that, Mac, my first thought was the router, the second was hardware / software / drivers in the PC itself, but those seem to have been discounted by rebooting the router and the wireless working but the cable not working on the laptop.

The good news is that a new cable is a couple of quid (depending on length required!) and new wireless routers have dropped in price over the past few years, so it shouldn't be a huge cost if the problem is in the networking hardware.

 

[MacB]

I've got to agree with all that, Mac, my first thought was the router, the second was hardware / software / drivers in the PC itself, but those seem to have been discounted by rebooting the router and the wireless working but the cable not working on the laptop.

The good news is that a new cable is a couple of quid (depending on length required!) and new wireless routers have dropped in price over the past few years, so it shouldn't be a huge cost if the problem is in the networking hardware.

True, just that I had similar recently, am running XP via LAN but also have a wireless card in PC as well. Tried rebooting router, PC, etc and no joy. When I disabled the LAN and enabled the wireless card it worked and I took the opportunity to get any latest patches from MS, though XP stuff is getting thin now. Then I let Malwarebytes do its detailed bit and it found a couple that had snuck through. Rebooted PC, disabled wireless card, re-enabled LAN and ran repair and it all worked fine and has been fine since.

That all sounds straight forward but it took me ages to sus out and and an embarassingly long time to rmember that I had a wireless card on the PC anyway