PC Woes

[Tim_A 997]

It's the evil Windows Update Of Death...

Before the recent update, everything was working fine: hello birds; hello sky; la di dah and so on.

Shut down PC at the end of the day, and windows Update kicks in. Fine; I leave it to it and go to bed.

Next day, switch on PC, and all seems to be fine, until I come to access the Internet.... error Firefox cannot access the server. Hmm.

Now, I have determined the following:

* The internal LAN is up and running - I can see NAS drives, the router etc

* The router is connected to the Internet - I can access the web from Mac and iOS (if you can read this... )

* Other devices (e.g. SkyHD box, BluRay player, Wii, AppleTV etc) have no trouble accessing the Internet

* I can see the PC on the net from the Mac

I've tried:

* Full virus & malware scans - nothing reported

* System restore to before the update - no difference

* Run troubleshooting wizard: Fails saying diagnostics service is not running. Attempting to start the diagnostics service reports "you do not have permission to perform this action". I'm using an admin account...

In addition, I've noticed that the Windows firewall appears to be deactivated. If I try to reactivate it, it also reports "you do not have permission..."

Short of doing a complete system teardown and rebuild (would be the third time this year. Who said Windows 7 was supposed to be reliable?), does anyone have any ideas on how to get the PC back online?

[simi_av8r 0]

tim,

since you can see the NAS from the W7 PC it suggests the IP side is working from there (unless that is you cant actually access it and all that is showing is a ghost of the NAS from a previous connection)...add in to that the fact that your other PCs/Mac connect to the internet ok suggests nothing wrong network side for them, one thing to test is are they able to 'ping' your now defunct PC's ip address....does your pc even have an IP address??

either way it may be a case of the DHCP lease not auto-renewing on the defunct PC after it rebooted and wanted to connect to the internet, although this wouldn't necessarily prevent the IP address from being issued - hence you can see the NAS drive.

easiest way to reset it and renew the IP and DHCP lease is as below:

1. Open Network Connections by clicking the Start button , clicking Control Panel, clickingNetwork and Internet, clicking Network and Sharing Center, and then clicking Manage network connections.
   
2. Right-click the network adapter, and then do one of the following:
   
   • To disable the network adapter, click Disable. If you are prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation.
   • To enable the network adapter, click Enable. If you are prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation.

Hopefully that helps get it all working for you... if not report back and i'm sure we'll get you up and running again asap!

Simi

[SEATAC 400]

You could always do a system restore to the most recent date prior to the Windows update.

If you can connect after that, you know it was the update that caused it.

Then you can pick and choose the udpates one at a time to see if and where the problem kicks in.

[Tim_A 997]

Hi Simi,

That's made no difference

Looking in the network connection details dialog, there's no mention of the DHCP lease. The items it *does* mention are...

Notice the default gateway and WINS server entries are blank. Also, the wifi connection is showing 'no connections available' (but signal strength 5 bars!). Again, other devices can find and connect to the wifi LAN.

The wired connection is definitely live to local devices -- I can print across the network, and also administer the router & NAS boxes, open & save files (I copied those screenshots across the LAN to upload from the Mac). The IPv4 address is normally reserved for this PC by the router, but I removed the reservation, rebooted the router & tried again: Still no connectivity, and still no lease info shown.

[Tim_A 997]

You could always do a system restore to the most recent date prior to the Windows update.

Thanks Seatac,

Tried that; no difference, unfortunately

[simi_av8r 0]

hmm, interesting....

it seems like the machine has an IP address, but is not seeing the 'gateway' to the internet via your router.

Also, the DNS address looks a bit suspect, it shouldn't usually be teh router IP address... try setting teh DNS values to the Google Public DNS Server as below:

• 1st server - 8.8.8.8
• 2nd server - 8.8.4.4

don't worry about the WINS server entry being blank, that's not very useful for most home networks anyway (unless you're running NetBIOS) as DNS is the better, and more reliable, alternative.

If you're still stuck after the above suggestions, my next bet woul dbe to look at the router settings internally - can the PC you're on access the router config page - if yes, check to see if it has MAC address filtering enabled, if so DISABLE it, if not, we'll go from there.

[Tim_A 997]

My other devices all have the router as their DNS. Changing it makes no difference anyhow.

Not sure about MAC address filtering - I thought that only applied to wifi. This is a wired connection.

I'm thinking of reapplying SP1, to see if that does anything. Just downloading it now on the mac.

[Tim_A 997]

Ok, scrub that idea; apparently Mac OS X isn't considered a valid copy of Windows!

[simi_av8r 0]

hmm, odd... ok, now i'm stumped.

MAC address filtering can be applied to a specific PC regardless of connection type...the only other thing that springs to mind is a complete shut down and reboot of the router/modem with atleat 30 seconds pause in between power on/off states.

also, and it may sound improbable, but a reinstall of the very latest ethernet drivers for your network card, check the manufacturer website here for your Windows version. A reinstall of the Windows Service Pack is unlikely to be of any real use as it will only replace the inbuilt software that, currently, is not working.

if, after the driver update you've still had no luck then, i'm afraid it'll me you should be off to a reputable PC mechanic....or a knight in shining armour.....

[Tim_A 997]

I'll try the driver tomorrow. I'm running a disc clone atm just in case I end up having to do a complete rebuild. Unfortunately it's over USB2, so it won't be finished until the wee small hours.

[MartinW 0]

In addition, I've noticed that the Windows firewall appears to be deactivated. If I try to reactivate it, it also reports "you do not have permission..."

I know you said you had run a virus scan, but the symptoms above sound like a classic virus to me.

If you are cloning the drive, you may be cloning a virus too.

sorry if I'm talking nonsense.

[charlie 6]

Similar thing happened to me with the recent update and Firefox. At times I couldn't access the Network and sharing centre at all, sometimes internet was available all day, at other times it dropped it after 5 minutes, and once dropped couldn't reconnect through the WAN and would only do so after physically switching the modem off and back on.

No viruses or malware was present, but it gave me major headaches. I tried re-installing drivers to no effect.

I bit the bullet and replaced my modem/router (but was probably due for one) and haven't had any issues since but I'd run out of ideas and wasted a lot of time on it.

I'm sorry I can't be more help but it is a frustrating one and I hope you fix it.

[Tim_A 997]

No joy with the driver either.

Then I had a bit of a brainwave: Look at the Windows error logs! (I keep telling people to do that on my forum, so why I didn't do it myself, I can't think ) Anyhow, that was showing an Access Denied error attempting to start the dhcp service. Seems it gets far enough to get onto the local LAN, but not out to the Internet.

So I googled it, and typically there are thousands of people having this problem, going back to 2003, but nobody providing solutions or answers. Almost always it starts after doing an update, although sometimes that's app and sometimes OS - there's no consistency.

Anyhow, tonight I had a thought: If dhcp is broken, why not just go back to the old manual method and simply set everything up by hand. Well I tried it and it worked At least, it got me onto the internet. BUT it doesn't survive a reboot - you have to set it up again every time.

So I think I'm still faced with a reinstall. Unfortunately this is an OEM version of Windoze, so it won't Repair (I know; I tried), so it'll have to be a reinstall of everything. :001_th_smiles48: But at least I get the chance to deregister iTunes (I've already had an account reset this Summer, so I really can't afford to lose an activation)