Wireless Works But A Second Wired System Doesn't

Running XPPro SP2 on everything. I recently signed up with Verizon DSL - got the Westell 6100 modem. I also connected a DLink DI-514 wireless router to the setup. The desktop is directly connected to one of the ports on the DLink and my laptop is connected wirelessly. This setup works as advertised.

Now I want to try a direct connection to the laptop (just to see if this will work as eventually I want to connect a Mac desktop). So I take the same ethernet cable that goes into the desktop network card and connect it to the network port on the laptop (its wireless card is turned off at this point). On the laptop I then get the message that the connection is made (at 100 Mbps) but the browser, IE, cannot bring up any web sites. Looking at the network icon in the tray, I can see that the back screen of the icon doesn't ever light up like it should when a web site is accessed.

Next I put a different drive in the desktop and it connects to the web without any problem - didn't have to adjust a thing. So I'm thinking that somehow the network card in the laptop has to be allowed access but how? If it matters I only have WEP enabled on the wireless router.

Thanks for any ideas out there.

 

Can you ping the router? Can you ping web sites? Drivers are installed, and the LAN NIC isn't disabled on the Laptop? Did you try to disable your wireless connection rather than just killing the antenna?

Doesn't sound like a router issue, and WEP certainly wouldn't play a role, sounds like you're not getting a connection to your laptop as a result of a setting on the actual laptop. If you can take the same network cable to get internet from it on another machine your trouble shooting starts right at the laptop itself.

 

Make sure you clone your MAC address of the PC used to setup the account. Most ISP look at the MAC address to control access to their network. If an apple, you need to set up the network cp to auto or manually change the settings, DHCP on wired and Wireless.

 

Sucka, I made sure I had a website I could ping on the desktop then tried it on the laptop - no go. The wireless has a switch to turn it on and off, I'm assuming this kills power to the wireless adapter so power is conserved when not needed and on battery. The laptop is an Averatec 3250.
Blue - when you say clone the mac address, is this the address of the dsl modem, or the NIC in the desktop? And do I clone the address to the laptop's NIC, how? I'll tackle the Apple after I sort out the laptop. since I hardly know squat about Macs.

Thanks for both of your replies.

 

You only need to clone the MAC address of the NIC card used to setup the account. Once done the ISP will only see that computer.

Mac's are the easy to setup compaired to a PC. The wireless work the same as a pc. There is a place to enter the key. On OSX it under the Network settings (System Preferences).

 

I found these instructions via a Google search for cloning the mac address, but ran into a stumbling block:
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1. Go to Start->Settings->Control Panel and double click on Network and Dial-up Connections.

2. Right click on the NIC you want to change the MAC address and click on properties.

3. Under “General” tab, click on the “Configure” button

4. Click on “Advanced” tab

5. Under “Property section”, you should see an item called “Network Address” or "Locally Administered Address", click on it.

6. On the right side, under “Value”, type in the New MAC address you want to assign to your NIC. Usually this value is entered without the “-“ between the MAC address numbers.
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On my Averatec 3250 laptop, I couldn't follow #5 because there wasn't either "Network Address" or "Locally Administered" listed. And on the right side, per #6, I could only choose items in a drop down list. Mine was set to Auto negotiation. Other choices were things like "TX 100 full duplex" and similar items.

On a whim, I decided to try the direct connection to the Apple anyway. And I'll be darned, the damn thing worked right off the bat. [My wife would never let me live this down, - she uses the Mac - after all the time I'm spending trying to get the lappy working with the direct connection. ]

So to recap, I have the DLink 4-port wireless router between the Westel dsl modem and the pc desktop, which is connected to port 1 on the router. The Apple is connected to port 3 on the router. All of this works.

The lappy is connected to port 2 on the router and cannot get out to the Internet. And I did try connecting the lappy to the cables coming from both port 1 and port 3, without success.

In light of the fact that the Apple worked right off the bat, do I still need to change the mac address of the nic in the lappy to match the nic in the desktop pc? Wouldn't having two nics with the same address cause problems?

When setting up the wireless router there was a "clone mac address" feature which I did, but I don't know if it was cloning the desktop nic address or the Westel modem mac address.

 

With the other PC/MAC working nothing needs to be changed in the router, unless the pc used to setup the account is off and the others can not connect.

Check your firewall settings on the Vista pc. Also since this is vista under the port setting make sure IP6 is un checked.

You may also need to setup a trusted zone.

 

Okay, problem solved ... logical reasoning said to me that if the Apple connected so easily, that it couldn't be anything to do with cloning Mac addresses. So I got a pcmcia nic and installed it in the lappy and Voila! ... instant connection to the internet. Although I don't know why XP said I had a connection when I connected the cable to the internal nic.

Thanks for sticking with me on this.

 

Since MS reworked the network and Security in Vista it has been nothing but a pain. There is one setting that is being missed. Could have to be with the port setting. Since they setup multiple layers to protect users. I guess their reasoning worked, if you cant go on line your protected.

 

I haven't moved to Vista yet and probably will not do so until the first service pack is released. XP is running too sweet to try Vista just because it is the "in thing".

 

If you are behind a router, you do not need to clone mac addresses, the cable company is only going to see the router.

I guess you already got this working with the external nic, but when the internet doesn't connect on my computer when the Cat5 is in, I usually have to mess around with IE7 settings to get it to detect properly.

 

This is what was confusing me all along, since I knew this and couldn't understand why the lappy wouldn't connect and the Apple did - until the "bulb lit up". It was the first time I was trying to use the internal nic. Anyway got it to work with a pcmcia nic.

 

I have a similar problem, but slightly different. Wireless seems to work great, but I am using a wired network (at the same time) to connect to some environmental sensors. Everything connects and runs just fine for a period of time, but if I don't reboot the laptop every 12 hours or so, the wired LAN loses connection and says I don't have a valid IP (static IP that worked for the previous 11 hours). I have to reboot the entire machine, disabling and enabling the port doesn't fix it. Any idea?