J
Jamie Furlong
I'd be very grateful if someone could help me help a non-techy friend
out, who's desperate to get back online so she can finish her coursework.
They live too far away to just drop by, so I'm doing it over the phone.
Over the course of a three hour phone call, I established the following:
She has Windows Vista Home Basic.
It is connected via a LAN cable to an Etec ADSL router.
It used to be connected via a USB modem (which is faulty and kept
crashing the PC)
She can get into the admin page of the router, which shows that it is
connected to the internet.
From a command line on the PC, she can ping an IP address, for example,
BBC News on 212.58.226.29
The packets go fine.
If she types ping news.bbc.co.uk, it says it cannot find the server
If she types ping -l 1500 212.58.226.29 she gets 100% packet loss.
On the internet connection status, it says:
ipv4 connected
ipv6 limited
If she goes to the diagnostics, it says:
"The security policy settings on this computer might be blocking the
connection. The following policy might need to be adjusted to allow
windows to connect.
Policy provider: Windows firewall
Filter Name: query user
If the policy provider identified is windows firewall, click for
information about adjusting windows firewall settings
If a different policy provider has been identified, check the providers
document".
Insofar as the PC can talk to the router and the router can talk to the
internet and small packet pings work but bigger packets don't, I thought
it must be the MTU settings.
The router defaults were: mtu:1492 mru:1492 mss:1432
The router is running PPPoA on Orange broadband on the BT network I believe.
I went and Googled extensively and found an alternative setting of 1420
in all boxes, which we applied and rebooted, but the result was the same.
I then found these pages:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/community/columns/cableguy/cg1005.mspx
http://www.chris123nt.com/guides/5365/
http://tweakhound.com/vista/tweakguide/page_9.htm
In particular, the last two sites recommend disabling IPv6, which makes
sense as it was that which reported limited connectivity. So, we made
the box look like the "recommended" on on the tweakhound site, and reset
the mtu, mru and mss to default. Rebooted everything, but again, pinging
IP works, pinging IP with larger packets or by name doesn't, and ip
addresses in websites don't work.
To my limited experience, it seems a classic case of fragmented packets
and MTU problems. But having only used Vista for about 20 minutes, I'm
now lost. We've been trying to resolve it since 8pm and it's now coming
up to midnight, so I'm really hoping one of you good people can come up
with a suggesting, bearing in mind that although she's a bright lass,
she's not a computer whizzkid, so registry edits might be going a bit far.
Many many thanks.
out, who's desperate to get back online so she can finish her coursework.
They live too far away to just drop by, so I'm doing it over the phone.
Over the course of a three hour phone call, I established the following:
She has Windows Vista Home Basic.
It is connected via a LAN cable to an Etec ADSL router.
It used to be connected via a USB modem (which is faulty and kept
crashing the PC)
She can get into the admin page of the router, which shows that it is
connected to the internet.
From a command line on the PC, she can ping an IP address, for example,
BBC News on 212.58.226.29
The packets go fine.
If she types ping news.bbc.co.uk, it says it cannot find the server
If she types ping -l 1500 212.58.226.29 she gets 100% packet loss.
On the internet connection status, it says:
ipv4 connected
ipv6 limited
If she goes to the diagnostics, it says:
"The security policy settings on this computer might be blocking the
connection. The following policy might need to be adjusted to allow
windows to connect.
Policy provider: Windows firewall
Filter Name: query user
If the policy provider identified is windows firewall, click for
information about adjusting windows firewall settings
If a different policy provider has been identified, check the providers
document".
Insofar as the PC can talk to the router and the router can talk to the
internet and small packet pings work but bigger packets don't, I thought
it must be the MTU settings.
The router defaults were: mtu:1492 mru:1492 mss:1432
The router is running PPPoA on Orange broadband on the BT network I believe.
I went and Googled extensively and found an alternative setting of 1420
in all boxes, which we applied and rebooted, but the result was the same.
I then found these pages:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/community/columns/cableguy/cg1005.mspx
http://www.chris123nt.com/guides/5365/
http://tweakhound.com/vista/tweakguide/page_9.htm
In particular, the last two sites recommend disabling IPv6, which makes
sense as it was that which reported limited connectivity. So, we made
the box look like the "recommended" on on the tweakhound site, and reset
the mtu, mru and mss to default. Rebooted everything, but again, pinging
IP works, pinging IP with larger packets or by name doesn't, and ip
addresses in websites don't work.
To my limited experience, it seems a classic case of fragmented packets
and MTU problems. But having only used Vista for about 20 minutes, I'm
now lost. We've been trying to resolve it since 8pm and it's now coming
up to midnight, so I'm really hoping one of you good people can come up
with a suggesting, bearing in mind that although she's a bright lass,
she's not a computer whizzkid, so registry edits might be going a bit far.
Many many thanks.