A case of the lying Vista: Wireless Confusion

Problem:
I've found myself with a problem connect to one specific network with my laptop, what’s weird is this network used to work.

Basically, I've been at college for the last month and have returned home for a two week break. I've connected to the network here over the last 6 months every time I returned about a week each time, 4 or 5 times. I've never had the slightest issue before. This time when I came home the wireless noticed the network and tried to connect with the old profile, it couldn't connect.

I was connected to my network at school. I disconnected and shut down the laptop. Three hour drive later I turned my laptop on and tried to connect.

Situation:
There have been no changes made to the router, or its settings. There have also been no network settings changed intentionally on the laptop. Only thing that’s new are the normal windows updates the machine installs. There is an XP Pro machine connect by Ethernet; two XP laptops and a Vista laptop are connected by wireless connections. All of these machines continue to work perfectly right now.

I can ping my gateway when connected and I always get a very quick response (3-5ms with a 20ms responses every 10 or 20 times). However, when I try and ping outside my network it almost always times out. When I try to load the web control panel it is very slow, some images never show up, and generally I can’t get past the first page, just logged in and authenticated.

My ISP is Comcast and we have a gateway from them, a WCG200-CC. Makes it hard to do much since it doesn’t allow much manual control. Its running Vista Home Premium 32bit. Machine is a Lenovo T61p. The machine connects normally and tells me I have ‘Local and Internet’. When I open a web browser I can enter a site and it will seem to find it, load the favicon generally and then get stuck. If I wait for several minutes I will get a page like ‘site cannot be found’. No program can connect to the internet.

Attempted Fixes:
The follow are some of the things I’ve tried to fix, none have fixed it.
-I've tried disabling IP6
-Deleting the old profiles and making new ones.
-Various text commands to reset DNS, windows stacks and who knows what
-I've opened the routers control panel and gone over every setting, nothing has changed.
-restarting computer
-restarting router
-changing router settings such as channel to try and deal with a possible interference issue
-deleted all settings and then reset them to make sure everything was as desired. Other computers connect, this one won't.
-Made sure all DNS/IP settings are to be detected automatically
-Tried rolling back to an old restore point many days earlier
-Running off AC to be sure it wasn’t a power issue
-Using Lenovo software and Windows utility to try and connect
-Disabling all security software, and windows firewall

Help?
Does anyone have any ideas? I’m really irritated at this point that I have a laptop that works fine, and a router that work fine pretending that everything is jolly, but won’t work. Both seem to work with any other router/laptop and used to work together, but not anymore. I’ve got weeks and months here in the future and being stuck by a 5 foot cord sitting at a desk with another desktop is not working out.

Ipconfig/all printout:
Windows IP Configuration

Host Name . . . . . . . . . . . . : LawryT61p
Primary Dns Suffix . . . . . . . :
Node Type . . . . . . . . . . . . : Peer-Peer
IP Routing Enabled. . . . . . . . : No
WINS Proxy Enabled. . . . . . . . : No
DNS Suffix Search List. . . . . . : chn.comcast.net

Wireless LAN adapter Wireless Network Connection:

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : chn.comcast.net
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Intel(R) Wireless WiFi Link 4965AGN
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-21-5C-54-99-E7
DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes
Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes
Link-local IPv6 Address . . . . . : fe80::d34:860c:5386:5aed%11(Preferred)
IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.3(Preferred)
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
Lease Obtained. . . . . . . . . . : Monday, December 22, 2008 6:14:03 PM
Lease Expires . . . . . . . . . . : Monday, December 22, 2008 7:53:28 PM
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.1
DHCP Server . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.1
DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : 68.87.72.130
68.87.77.130
192.168.0.1
NetBIOS over Tcpip. . . . . . . . : Enabled

Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection:

Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected
Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : chn.comcast.net
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Intel(R) 82566MM Gigabit Network Connecti
on
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-1F-E2-12-21-EA
DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes
Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes

Tunnel adapter Local Area Connection* 6:

Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected
Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : chn.comcast.net
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : isatap.chn.comcast.net
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-00-00-00-00-00-00-E0
DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : No
Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes

Tunnel adapter Local Area Connection* 11:

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Teredo Tunneling Pseudo-Interface
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 02-00-54-55-4E-01
DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : No
Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes
IPv6 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 2001:0:4137:9e50:3c71:3210:3f57:fffc(Pref
erred)
Link-local IPv6 Address . . . . . : fe80::3c71:3210:3f57:fffc%12(Preferred)
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : ::
NetBIOS over Tcpip. . . . . . . . : Disabled

Tunnel adapter Local Area Connection* 12:

Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected
Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : 6TO4 Adapter
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-00-00-00-00-00-00-E0
DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : No
Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes

 

Does the laptop connect via ethernet, or does it have connection issues regardless of the connection type?

 

With an ethernet cable it connects instantly and works without any issues.

 

Have you reviewed the logs on the router and on your laptop?

Vista help on accessing logs: http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/Wi...e943-5f84-4d94-94f6-b258911d65571033.mspx#EMC

 

I can open event viewer, but I can't find any network related logs. As far as I know the router I'm having issues with doesn't keep logs that can be accessed by the user.

 

Sounds like a similar problem I was having trying to connect to any wireless network and coming up with 'local only.' A bit different than your situation, but probably worth a shot. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/928233/en-us It didn't work for me, so maybe it'll help you ??

 

The flag was already set to 1 for both adapters, I tried changing it to zero, but it had no effect.

Any other ideas?

 

I'm just curious why your router/gateway is in the DNS server list...

 

You said you tried disabling IPv6; did you re-enable it? I ask because the ipconfig results you posted show that there's still an active IPv6 connection - the one named Tunnel adapter Local Area Connection* 11 - as of now, there is still no need, as a general matter, to have IPv6 enabled, so I would make sure that IPv6 is fully disabled.

Also, your router should be set as the DNS server for the wireless NIC - the DNS server that's listed right now is outside your particular subnetwork, which means that the NIC is not going to be able to find the DNS server's proper address in order to send a DNS request to it, which means that the NIC is simply not going to be able to resolve any host names outside of your local subnetwork.

 

and

First, yes I did turn IPv6 back on, when it wasn't the issue I prefer to default things back to how they were so as to prevent creating new issues.

As for DNS: When everything is set to automatic the router has those to IPs listed and each computer picks them up. Checking on computers that work they all list those 2 addresses. Also I tired going to the wireless adapter properties and setting my IPv4 (when IPv6 was disabled) to only have the router. This didn't seem to solve anything.

One other thing, when I ping sites like www.engadget.com for example it does resolve the longer URL and an IP that matches working computers. It does not however receive any packets back, any idea what this might be?

Any suggestions for how to fix (if it needs to be) this knowing the above?

 

I wouldn't re-enable IPv6 just because it was originally enabled by default. Not all security software has been rewritten to parse IPv6 traffic, so leaving it enabled when you don't need it can inadvertently create an open backdoor for malware to get onto your system.

 

K, I'll turn IPv6 off for securities sake, but it still doesn't solve the problem. I think I'm just going to ignore it as we will probably be leaving comcast soon anyways due to expensive, low quality service for both internet and TV. At that point there will be a new router and this problem won't exist, so... problem unfixable but soon to be solved.