Wireless connection doesn't work when wired Ethernet is pluggged in?

[lessthanuthought]

Hi,
I have a NAS drive which I connect through a router coming in to my wired Ethernet port, and I connect to the internet through a wireless connection to a different router. I've previously had this working, but I just formatted my computer and I forgot how I set it up before. I think I had to change something with the metrics of both connections. If I turn off my wireless connection, or change the metrics to 15 for the wired, and 40 for wireless, It detects my networked drive right away, but the internet doesn't work; and if I do the opposite the Internet works, but the drive isn't detected. (which is also what happens if I don't change any settings) I am running Windows 7 in case that matters. I'm sure this is a stupidly easy fix, but I just can't figure it out or find relevant information elsewhere, any help you guys can give would be awesome.

Thanks in advance,
Byron

 

[corkyg]

I have a laptop which both wireless and wired capability. I normally use wired - faster and more secure. But, when I travel, I go wireless. When I test wireless I must unplug the Cat5 cable. It can't have both at the same time - very conflicting.

 

[lessthanuthought]

As stated in my post, It can have both plugged in, I know this because I have done it in the past.

 

[Homerboy]

I could have sworn I had a laptop in the past where if there was a wired connection detected, the built-in wireless turned off to help save a drop of battery life. This was a bios setting.

 

[Gooberlx2]

If it's not an auto-shutoff feature like Homerboy mentioned, be sure that the NICs aren't trying to capture the same IP for themselves.

Might be best if you assign the IP settings manually, or you could probably still use dhcp if the routers are set to different subnets.

 

[Nothinman]

As long as they're separate networks you should be able to do that by just making sure the wireless is the last to connect so it's default is the last one set. Or by setting your default route manually.

 

[lessthanuthought]

Thanks for the replies, they are separate networks Nothinman, could you explain how I can set the default route manually?

 

[Nothinman]

With the route command. Although I'm pretty sure that a gateway provided by DHCP will always take precedence so it would probably be simpler to just have the DHCP server on the NAS side not provide one.

 

[lessthanuthought]

woohoo, thanks for all the replies everyone. What I ended up doing was just manually putting in all my TCP/IP info and then setting the metric to 15 for the wireless and 30 for the wired, everything working fine now, probably an ip conflict as someone said.
Thanks again posters