Odd Networking Problem

[SteveCoff]

I'm having this weird problem that just creeped up. I am connecting via a Linksys 4 connection Router to a cable modem. The problem that is occuring is that my PC seems to connect fine to known IP addresses but will not connect when needing to use DNS. What I mean is that MSN Messenger finds its server ok and I can ping by IP but if I try to use say CNN.COM it dies. Also, if I bypass the router and direct connect to modem, it will find a valid IP upon startup but if I release and renew it will not connect to the DHCP server. The ISP tech support seemed to think it was a NIC going bad but I changed cards and it still will not work. My second PC will connect fine, no issues at all.

I'm running Win2K Pro on an Epox 8K7A MB. Has anyone seem anything like this or have any ideas?

Thanks.

 

[JackMDS]

Look at your HOSTS.SAM file.

 

[SteveCoff]

I tried it without using the router. No go either. My other PC works fine with the router or without. Any other thoughts?

 

[n0cmonkey]

Make sure you are inputting the correct information in the machine when you use the router. Are you using dhcp on your internal network? If so, try using static ips. Specify the DNS servers instead of relying on the dhcp server to give them to you.

 

[jwo7777777]

Do this on both machines: From commmand line type (without quotes) "ipconfig /all".
Compare the two outputs. You are looking for a lack of DNS server IPs on your problem machine or different DNS IPs.

"ping x.x.x.x" the listed DNS IPs from the known bad machine. If you had no DNS IPs listed on the known bad machine, ping the known good machine DNS IPs from the known bad computer.

Have you tried the following:
1) Factory resets of the linksys and modem.
2) Swap network cables between good and bad computer.
3) Swap PCI slots of NIC in known bad computer.
4) Do you have some sort of significant network software difference between the PCs (i.e. one is running a caching DNS service and the other isn't)

If literally everything else fails, I would look at the possibility of a corrupted registry or corrupted file in the Win2k system files. That generally means a re-installation. It is rare but I have had my registry corrupted so that I had to re-install to get the OS to operate properly.

 

[SteveCoff]

I'll try those tonight and see if they help. Thanks. If you think of anything else, please post it and I'll follow up on those also.

 

[ttn1]

I have a netgear FA311 card that exhibits similar very strange behaviour on the network. It is on an ASUS A7V133 MB. When I plug the
machine directly into a wallport, in a university lab, it connects fine, but when I connect it to a Netgear switch connected to the same
wallport it has trouble connecting and will timeout on any type of net usage.

Funny thing is I have 2 identical 1.33 GHz Athlon machines that act exactly the same way. All my other machines work fine, in
front or behind the switch.

This leads to my suggestion to try a network card from another, known working, machine. I haven't gotten around to trying that
with the machines I have.