Can't establish a 2nd network connection on my laptop

[vapidtransit]

I have a laptop that my employer bought for me. It's a DELL inspiron 1150. Before I could use it at work, I had to turn it over to our IT lady (which is sort of a joke considering that I know more about computers than she does) so she could get the computer and XP pro configured to connect to the building's LAN.

One weekend when my box at home was down, I brought my laptop home so I could have a computer on the weekend. Company policy states that laptops are not to be allowed to connect to the internet by any other means than the LAN here in the building, but since I'm not a dumbass who's going to bring a virus into the network, I assumed that rule did not apply to me.

Onto the problem...

I turned on the laptop at home and went into my network connections. I disabled the work connection which was showing up as disconnected/network drives unavailable etc. Then I plugged in my cable modem (the "PC" light went on on the front of the modem, no problems there) and ran the "new connection wizard." It wouldn't detect the network connection from my cable modem. If I enabled the work LAN connection, it would try to connect to the LAN through my cable modem.

I rebooted with the cable plugged in and the work LAN connection disabled and it still didn't work. Finally I was able to get online by using the USB connection to my cable modem, but at some point I will have this laptop at a business meeting or a friend's house and I will need to establish an ethernet connection (of course, I have wifi on there...but I'll always pick a wire connection if its available.)

Is there some setting in XP pro that the IT lady might have turned on that's preventing me from establishing ethernet connections in addition to the one that's configured to connect me to the LAN at work? If not, is there something here i'm missing? The aforementioned cable connection works just fine on my gf's laptop with no setup steps whatsoever (also a DELL.)

 

[RBBRMADE]

"I turned on the laptop at home and went into my network connections. I disabled the work connection which was showing up as disconnected/network drives unavailable etc."

It sounds like what you disabled was the NIC itself, not the preconfigured connection. You will have to go into the properties of that connection and reconfigure it for your home connection.

RonRR

 

[rainypickles]

for the lan connection, does it already have an IP address/gateway/etc specified? if you so, maybe you should set it to obtain ip automatically.

 

[vapidtransit]

Originally posted by: rainypickles
for the lan connection, does it already have an IP address/gateway/etc specified? if you so, maybe you should set it to obtain ip automatically.

Yes it does, and herein lies the problem...If I screw it up trying to get online somewhere else then I have to take it to our IT desk and explain how I screwed it up while trying to violate company policy.

 

[rainypickles]

Originally posted by: vapidtransit

Originally posted by: rainypickles
for the lan connection, does it already have an IP address/gateway/etc specified? if you so, maybe you should set it to obtain ip automatically.

Yes it does, and herein lies the problem...If I screw it up trying to get online somewhere else then I have to take it to our IT desk and explain how I screwed it up while trying to violate company policy.

suggestions:

1. write everything down so you can put everything back when you go back to work. set it to obtain ip address automatically when you are at home.

2. create a restore point, so if you bork everything, you can roll back.

3. buy a cheap pcmcia ethernet adapter (they come free with dsl orders) to use at home. probably easy to find on ebay or fs/ft. this is probably the simplest solution.

 

[mamisano]

Another option is to install software that will save Network settings under several profiles. When you change locations, click the corresponding profile to load the network settings. My IBM Thinkpad has such a utility, albeit an IBM utility. You should be able to find one on www.Downloads.com. I searched for "Network Settings" and found various freeware/shareware applications that perform the same function as my IBM utility.