Internet LAN Cable Network Fail at Startup

[MichaelY]

Hi Y'all,

This used to work, but I have not been able to restore to that state and
I am not sure what I did just before it began to fail. I just converted
from dial-up to broadband and from Windows ME to Windows XP so I have
been busy making many changes.

Currently at system startup, my direct cable connection to the internet
(Comcast) through my NIC card (Lynksys NC100) fails to acquire an IP
address. Repair doesn't work. I have to disable and re-enable the
connection and that then makes the connection. This is consistent.

Anyone have a clue?

Thanx,
Michael

Computer Setup:

Software:
Windows XP Home - Installed over Windows ME
ZoneAlarm Pro 3.5
Norton AntiVirus 2003 Pro
WordPerfect Office 2002 Pro
Microsoft Office 2000 Pro
Other Misc. Software

Hardware:
Intel Pentium III 550MHz.
Motherboard Chipset Intel 82440BX/ZX
384MB Memory 100 MHz.
4 Hard drives (20GB, 18GB, 18GB, 60GB) with a 66MB RAID card.
LS120 Removable disk drive
100MB IOMEGA Zip Drive
DVD-ROM Player
CD-RW
ATI Rage 128 All-In-Wonder AGP 2x
Creative SB Live Value! Sound card.
Linksys Fast Ethernet NC100 (v2)
ZOOM Internal Data/Fax Modem 56KB
2 USP 1.0 Ports
Lexmark Color Printer (Currently not set up with drivers)
HP Color Scanner
ECP connected HP LaserJet 4L Printer

 

[Guest]

Yes, I think I can help. I had somewhat of the same problem when I was
starting from ME to XP. Click Control Panel; Netowrk Connections; Right Click
on your Local Area connection; Click Properties; Make sure all boxes are
checked under "This connection uses the following items:"
I doubt I'm wrong as I fixed the same problem on my computer this way as
well. Basically, if one of htem arent checked off, then if you have different
users on your computer, then the internet conection won't be shared or let
through to your user after a while. Try it and let me know how it all turns
out.

 

[hustedj]

After you disable and re-enable the connection does it work? I would say you
night have a bad network card. See if you can barrow one from someone or
just buy another one, they are only about $30 or so and see if that takes
care of the issue.

 

[MichaelY]

Dear Thunderstruck:

Thanks for replying, but I have bad news. Bad news more for me, I think
than for you. All items are checked and I am the only user on the
machine. And it still exhibits the same behavior.

I guess I didn't make myself clear as I see that both you and hustedj
who answered following you are not aware of the full extent of my
problem and my testing of it. I will use all caps for emphasis, not to
yell at anybody, but to make sure that the point is clear.

EVERY TIME I REBOOT, and I have done it AT LEAST 50 TIMES, maybe over
100 times over the past 4 days, for the purposes of loading programs and
updates to Windows XP, Windows Office 2000, Norton AntiVirus 2003 which
I had to remove and reinstall, etc., etc., and to test and try to solve
this problem by disabling startup programs one at a time, over and over
and over, making changes here there and everywhere including
uninstalling my NIC card and reinstalling it with the Windows supplied
drivers and the latest available drivers downloaded from Linksys, and
turning the power off and on again at the modem, over and over for 4
days now, EVERY TIME, AT STARTUP, THE NETWORK FAILS to acquire a dynamic
IP Address with DNS with the modem showing full connection. AND EACH AND
EVERY TIME, I disable the connection and RE-ENABLE IT, IT WORKS!

While it is possible that this is just coincidence, and I may have an
intermittent modem or NIC card, I doubt it. It is just too consistent.
It must be programmatic. I might have some parameter that I screwed up
between the time it was working successfully and now. But I have a
suspicion that it was one of the updates that I downloaded, either to
Windows XP or to Microsoft Office. And for some reason, I can not back
these updates out. No restore points work.

Michael

 

[MichaelY]

Hi hustedj,

I am repeating here what I wrote in reponse to Thunderstruck above. I
appreciate your taking time to answer my posting and I want to both
acknowledge you for that and clear up any misunderstanding of the problem.

I guess I didn't make myself clear as I see that both you and
Thunderstruck are not aware of the full extent of my problem and my
testing of it. I will use all caps for emphasis, not to yell at anybody,
but to make sure that the point is clear.

EVERY TIME I REBOOT, and I have done it AT LEAST 50 TIMES, maybe over
100 times over the past 4 days, for the purposes of loading programs and
updates to Windows XP, Windows Office 2000, Norton AntiVirus 2003 which
I had to remove and reinstall, etc., etc., and to test and try to solve
this problem by disabling startup programs one at a time, over and over
and over, making changes here there and everywhere including
uninstalling my NIC card and reinstalling it with the Windows supplied
drivers and the latest available drivers downloaded from Linksys, and
turning the power off and on again at the modem, over and over for 4
days now, EVERY TIME, AT STARTUP, THE NETWORK FAILS to acquire a dynamic
IP Address with DNS with the modem showing full connection. AND EACH AND
EVERY TIME, I disable the connection and RE-ENABLE IT, IT WORKS!

While it is possible that this is just coincidence, and I may have an
intermittent modem or NIC card, I doubt it. It is just too consistent.
It must be programmatic. I might have some parameter that I screwed up
between the time it was working successfully and now. But I have a
suspicion that it was one of the updates that I downloaded, either to
Windows XP or to Microsoft Office. And for some reason, I can not back
these updates out. No restore points work.

Michael

 

[Sleepless in Seattle]

What happens if you use "ipconfig /renew"?

 

[V Green]

Turn off power management for the card, if
you haven't tried that already.

It should be in the Properties for the card.

 

[MichaelY]

What happens if you use "ipconfig /renew"?

I haven't tried it and I will, but if it worked, it would only be a
little less of a pain-in-the-ass solution than what I am currently doing.

What I need is a solution as to why the startup connection fails.

I am Sleepless in Maryland trying to finish my migration from ME to XP
and from dial-up to cable.

Michael

 

[MichaelY]

What happens if you use "ipconfig /renew"?

Now I tried it. Too bad it doesn't work. I got a message:

"An error occurred while renewing interface Lan Connection : unable to
contact your DHCP server. Request has timed out."

I was thinking of writing a batch program that executed from my Startup
folder.

Michael

 

[John Bailo]

MichaelY wrote:

drivers and the latest available drivers downloaded from Linksys, and
turning the power off and on again at the modem, over and over for 4
days now, EVERY TIME, AT STARTUP, THE NETWORK FAILS to acquire a dynamic
IP Address with DNS with the modem showing full connection. AND EACH AND
EVERY TIME, I disable the connection and RE-ENABLE IT, IT WORKS!

It sounds like a timing issue.

At the point your trying to connect to your ISP and acquire a DHCP
address, your computer is busy still doing something else ( like booting
up, loading network services and so on ).

I suggest, removing the Microsoft Client from the network card if you
don't need it ( as in, you don't intend to connect to a NT Domain or
share your folders with other windows users on the internet and so on ).

At any rate give it a shot, and also look for other things in your
startup folder that might /slow/ /down/ the initialization of XP.

 

[MichaelY]

Thanks for responding.

This is a tough one. I couldn't find anything in the card properties
that allowed turning off power management. I searched KB and found an
article that said there should be a Power Management tab, but there was
none. It also gave a registry fix, but the value it said to change
(PnPCapabilities) was not there. I inserted one and it didn't do
anything. For what it is worth, here is url for KB article:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;837058

Michael

 

[MichaelY]

Hi John,

John,

It does sound like a timing issue, but I did stop all startup programs
from loading using msconfig and I still had the problem. At this point I
don't know where in the sequence the initialization takes place and
maybe I can figure it out from a bootlog. But even then, how do I go
about changing the timing of it?

I will try disabling Microsoft Client as you suggest and get back here
to let you know.

If anybody can write a small Basic procedure to disable and then enable
the network, I can include it in my startup folder and see if that gets
around the problem, maybe. Or else, after all these years, I will
finally have to write my first basic program to do it. Aghhh!

Michael

 

[V Green]

Hi John,

John,

It does sound like a timing issue, but I did stop all startup programs
from loading using msconfig and I still had the problem. At this point I
don't know where in the sequence the initialization takes place and
maybe I can figure it out from a bootlog. But even then, how do I go
about changing the timing of it?

I will try disabling Microsoft Client as you suggest and get back here
to let you know.

If anybody can write a small Basic procedure to disable and then enable
the network, I can include it in my startup folder and see if that gets
around the problem, maybe. Or else, after all these years, I will
finally have to write my first basic program to do it. Aghhh!

Michael

Try this from a command prompt:

NET STOP WORKSTATION

(some informational messages about the service
being stopped will appear)

NET START WORKSTATION

(more informational messages)

and see if you've been handed an IP.

If so, maybe a .BAT file of the above is all you need.

But, there's really something wrong here, this stuff
should NOT be necessary.

Might I suggest a different network card? They're
cheap, and your time spent on trying to resolve this
MUST have more value than that...

Be sure to thoroughly uninstall the one you've got
first...

 

[Malke]

Try this from a command prompt:

NET STOP WORKSTATION

(some informational messages about the service
being stopped will appear)

NET START WORKSTATION

(more informational messages)

and see if you've been handed an IP.

If so, maybe a .BAT file of the above is all you need.

But, there's really something wrong here, this stuff
should NOT be necessary.

Might I suggest a different network card? They're
cheap, and your time spent on trying to resolve this
MUST have more value than that...

Be sure to thoroughly uninstall the one you've got
first...

You've gotten lots of good suggestions. Here's another one I'm just
throwing out - what firewall do you have? We had Sygate Personal and
after we updated to SP2 we had timing problems getting IP addresses
from the router. Updating the Sygate firewall solved them.

Malke

 

[Steve Winograd [MVP]]

Hi Y'all,

This used to work, but I have not been able to restore to that state and
I am not sure what I did just before it began to fail. I just converted
from dial-up to broadband and from Windows ME to Windows XP so I have
been busy making many changes.

Currently at system startup, my direct cable connection to the internet
(Comcast) through my NIC card (Lynksys NC100) fails to acquire an IP
address. Repair doesn't work. I have to disable and re-enable the
connection and that then makes the connection. This is consistent.

Anyone have a clue?

Thanx,
Michael

Computer Setup:

Software:
Windows XP Home - Installed over Windows ME
ZoneAlarm Pro 3.5
Norton AntiVirus 2003 Pro
WordPerfect Office 2002 Pro
Microsoft Office 2000 Pro
Other Misc. Software

Hardware:
Intel Pentium III 550MHz.
Motherboard Chipset Intel 82440BX/ZX
384MB Memory 100 MHz.
4 Hard drives (20GB, 18GB, 18GB, 60GB) with a 66MB RAID card.
LS120 Removable disk drive
100MB IOMEGA Zip Drive
DVD-ROM Player
CD-RW
ATI Rage 128 All-In-Wonder AGP 2x
Creative SB Live Value! Sound card.
Linksys Fast Ethernet NC100 (v2)
ZOOM Internal Data/Fax Modem 56KB
2 USP 1.0 Ports
Lexmark Color Printer (Currently not set up with drivers)
HP Color Scanner
ECP connected HP LaserJet 4L Printer

Make sure that the DHCP Client service is running and is configured to
start automatically:

1. Right click My Computer, and click Manage.
2. Double click Services and Applications.
3. Double click Services.
4. Double click DHCP Client. If the Service status is Stopped, click
Start.
5. Set the Startup type to Automatic.
6. Reboot.

If that doesn't solve the problem, see if there are any relevant
messages in Event Viewer. To run it:

1. Right click My Computer, and click Manage.
2. Double click Event Viewer.

For more information, see

HOW TO: View and Manage Event Logs in Event Viewer in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=308427
--
Best Wishes,
Steve Winograd, MS-MVP (Windows Networking)

Please post any reply as a follow-up message in the news group
for everyone to see. I'm sorry, but I don't answer questions
addressed directly to me in E-mail or news groups.

Microsoft Most Valuable Professional Program
http://mvp.support.microsoft.com

 

[MichaelY]

To all of you who have given so much to help me, Than Y'all and I have
to report the following:

Last night my machine failed. First indication: No system could be
found. Later no Hard Disks could be found. CMOS setup showed them all
there, but even booting up with a start win98 floppy or self booting
CD-ROM which I had created, none could be found. Logical conclusion:
RAID card dead.

Disconnected CD-RW, CDROM, LS120, ZIP 100, from motherboard IDE
connections. Removed RAID card and connected my 4 discs to motherboard
(where all those removable drives had been connected) and magic, not
only did my hard drives work but I connected to network at startup.

Michael

 

[Malke]

To all of you who have given so much to help me, Than Y'all and I have
to report the following:

Last night my machine failed. First indication: No system could be
found. Later no Hard Disks could be found. CMOS setup showed them all
there, but even booting up with a start win98 floppy or self booting
CD-ROM which I had created, none could be found. Logical conclusion:
RAID card dead.

Disconnected CD-RW, CDROM, LS120, ZIP 100, from motherboard IDE
connections. Removed RAID card and connected my 4 discs to motherboard
(where all those removable drives had been connected) and magic, not
only did my hard drives work but I connected to network at startup.

I'm so sorry you had problems with your hardware, but I really
appreciate it that you took the time to tell us what happened. Good
luck, and stay safe.

Malke

 

[MichaelY]

I'm so sorry you had problems with your hardware, but I really
appreciate it that you took the time to tell us what happened. Good
luck, and stay safe.

Malke

That's all well and good and it is nice to be thanked for letting
everyone know what I thought was the final outcome.

HOWEVER, I had to get another RAID card and after installing and setting
my computer back up to "normal" everything returned to "normal" and the
problem is back.

I guess I am going to have to live with it.

Michael

 

[MichaelY]

Make sure that the DHCP Client service is running and is configured to
start automatically:

1. Right click My Computer, and click Manage.
2. Double click Services and Applications.
3. Double click Services.
4. Double click DHCP Client. If the Service status is Stopped, click
Start.
5. Set the Startup type to Automatic.
6. Reboot.

If that doesn't solve the problem, see if there are any relevant
messages in Event Viewer. To run it:

1. Right click My Computer, and click Manage.
2. Double click Event Viewer.

For more information, see

HOW TO: View and Manage Event Logs in Event Viewer in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=308427

Thanks Steve,
I checked and there are no messages and I am set up for automatic.

Michael

 

[V Green]

That's all well and good and it is nice to be thanked for letting
everyone know what I thought was the final outcome.

HOWEVER, I had to get another RAID card and after installing and setting
my computer back up to "normal" everything returned to "normal" and the
problem is back.

I guess I am going to have to live with it.

Michael

The fact that pulling the RAID card got everything happy
may be a useful clue...I suspect a hardware conflict requiring
the OS to reconfigure one or the other to use different IRQ's,
etc. during startup.

This slows down things long enough to cause an init delay
on the NIC, and lack of a valid IP when things go start looking
for one.

If you can, uninstall the NIC and move it to a different PCI
slot-the purpose being to try to force it to use different system
resources.