John. said:
I helped my friend rebuild his XP system. Now XP SP2 is installed from
scratch. The Network card shows up in Network Connections but there is
no LAN. Earthlink customer service could not help. So we have no
Internet connection. He has DSL with Earthlink's supplied DSL modem.
Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Thanks.
Are you connecting through a router, or do you have temporary access to one?
If so, test with the connection to the DHCP server on the router first. Be
sure that the network card (NIC) picks up the IP address from the router,
and can browse to the router's configuration pages - if you can get to the
router's login page, the NIC is properly configured for TCP/IP.
To do this, just plug the PC's NIC into any switch port on the router (not
the WAN or INTERNET port), using a standard network cable. Then open a
command prompt (start, run, CMD) and type IPCONFIG. If the addresses
listed aren't zero and the word "autoconfiguration" does not appear, you
should be fine. Look at the gateway address, which will be something like
192.168.1.1 or 192.169.2.1. Enter that address in a browser, and you
should get a page asking you for a password. If you do, all is well.
If you don't, be sure that the NIC's TCP/IP properties are all set to
*automatic* rather than fixed.
Once you can get an IP address from the router, create a new connectoid
using the DSL login information supplied by the ISP. Or, configure the
router to log into the ISP's network. If you continue to use the router,
you *do not* enter the login information on the PC. The router logs in,
your PC does not.
HTH
-pk
