XP Home - Does DHCP but nothing else

[travisio]

An XP home machine will contact the DHCP server during boot and pull an IP. I made sure that it was actually talking to the DHCP server and not caching the IP (if thats possible) by checking the lease time in the DHCP manager. After it boots up though, you can't ping anything nor access any web pages. As well, you can't renew the IP if you release it. The built in firewall is turned off and there are no errors for the NIC in the device manager. The port on the switch shows no alignment or FCS errors of any sort. I hooked up my laptop to the drop and it functioned fine, so I think I can pretty much narrow it down to the OS or the NIC of her computer. The NIC is showing link, if you unplug it from the jack you get the message down in the system tray saying "network cable unplugged". I can't remember the exact brand of the NIC but it had a Realtek chipset. If anyone has any suggestions or has seen something like this before, your help would be appreciated. The computer is brand new (maybe a week old) from Dell.

 

[Tallgeese]

I've seen this a couple times (on W2K also).
First troubleshooting step is usually to remove and re-install all networking components.
Sometimes something is farked with the factory build.

Is the machine a laptop or desktop?
Dell tech was out today fixing one of our new laptops.
Built-in NIC had been acting flakey.
Similar symptoms, altho not exactly the same behavior.

 

[travisio]

Thanks for the info TG. It is a desktop btw. I can't support this computer beyond the scope of the what the University allows. However, the girl was real nice and really wanted her new computer to work. So I decided to, on my own time, remove the NIC from the device manager, in the hopes it would redetect and install the drivers for the NIC. Removing the NIC should remove all the services and protocols associated with that NIC correct? Well it redetected the NIC and did the same thing it was doing. I think I will try and install an Intel NIC in it and see if it functions properly. After this, I should know whether the OS or the NIC is the problem causer. If XP went stupid this may turn out to be a fun new install..... I will keep this thread updated on what I have found out.

 

[Tallgeese]

Yep...a different (better) NIC would be my next step too.

Something else I just thought of:
I know you said that XP's built-in firewall is turned off, but does she have any other firewall software listed in Add/Remove Programs?
Even if it's not active or running at startup, it could still be farking the stack enough to cause what you are seeing.

 

[travisio]

Yep it was the NIC. I threw an Intel in there and everything worked flawlessly. I was too lazy to try a dif. set of drivers to see if that fixed the problem with the other NIC. I just told her to hang onto it in case she needs to send it back. Thanks for the help TG.