Severe Lan Problems -- Packets are ONLY being Sent

[bobber205]

Weird LAN problems.

Here's what I desperately want to learn how to do.

My brother and I want to play WC III together. I have two pcs in my room hooked together with a ethernet cable.

What steps should I follow to guarantee a positive result when trying to play a LAN game together?

My setup was working once I had turned off the firewalls. But I once started up the computers w/o the cable and it hasn't worked since.

I do have a wireless connection on my laptop that I once tried to share unsuccessfully for some reason. (not a big deal though). When this WAS working, my wireless connection had to be turned off. This may be part of the problem...

I tried telling XP to make my ip 192.168.0.1 and the other 192.168.0.2 with the mask being the 255.255.255.0 usual and nada.

When connection appears to be "working" according to windows, but when I open it up to see the packets, nothing is going. No lights are flashing. Nothing. Only when I ping does anything occur. It seems my setup will ONLY send packets, never receive. Pings do work as they should which is the really weird part. Since pings work it can't be a hardware issues can it? This is quite irritating.

 

[RebateMonger]

First, make sure that Internet Connection Sharing is turned off or uninstalled.

Second, it sounds like you AREN'T using a router or switch to connect the two laptops? If you aren't, can both your wired NICS handle a non-crossover Ethernet cable? Many 100mbps NICs can't. I'd put a (cheap) switch or router between the two PCs, just to make sure.

Finally, if you ARE using a router, IP 192.168.0.1 is quite likely being reserved by the router, and you'd have an IP address conflict. Personally, I'd chose ANY other IP address in that subnet except for 192.168.0.1.

 

[nweaver]

yes, unless you happen to have gig (mdx is in the spec) I would get a crossover. Even then, I would get a crossover. Start at layer 1...if you don't have link lights, replace the cable until you do. Nothing else matters until you at least have link lights, then work your way up the OSI model

 

[bobber205]

Internet sharing did seems to cause problems. It's not on at the moment. How do I uninstall it?

I don't want to have to buy a router for this. Weird thing is, this WAS all working until suddenly one day when a setting probably got messed up. So I know it's possible.

I can get "connected" on the LAN connection for both computers, but no packets are sent. The setup is just one ethernet cord that works from the laptop to the desktop.

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: bobber205
Internet sharing did seems to cause problems. It's not on at the moment. How do I uninstall it?

It's been years since I worked with ICS. A quick newsgroup check tells me that ICS in XP can't be installed/uninstalled. Only turned on and off.

Weird thing is, this WAS all working until suddenly one day when a setting probably got messed up. So I know it's possible. .

Have you tried a different Ethernet cable? A bad cable could certainly cause this. I've had bad cables that would show "connected", but couldn't obtain an IP address via DHCP.

 

[bobber205]

I've tried another ethernet cord. Same EXACT results. God.
What steps do I need to follow to create a ethernet connection using just a cord from scratch?

When I disable the desktop's and tell XP to just get an ip automatically, I get some weird 164 number. When that happens the desktop is never able to "acquire" its address.

*is desperate*

 

[bobber205]

I had the desktop go to 192.168.0.31 and after a small freeze it ended up with the 169.254.109.47 number.

My laptop, told to go to 192.168.0.32, did w/o a freeze and actually got the right number.

And now i can't ping either machine. In cmd I get "destinatio host unreachable"

 

[RebateMonger]

Huh?
When you set the IP address manually, it WILL accept that IP address and shouldn't get a 169.xxx.xxx.xxx address. The 169.xxx address only happens when there's no other source of an IP address.

The reason that you're now getting "destination host unreachable" is that your two PCs are now on two completely different subnets, and can't talk to each other at all anymore.

 

[bobber205]

What settings should I definitely use? I'm a little confused.

 

[bobber205]

Ok. I went into my gentoo install:

using both a cable I KNEW was good and the two that I was worried about, I was able to connect to the net and do all the network activities.

But XP refuses to cooperate.