Wireless adapters + Win2k = random Page Load Errors?

Hi guys,

I am having a mysterious problem with two Windows 2000 machines. They are both fresh installs with all the updates installed. One of the machines is a custom built desktop with a P4 and a Netgear PCI wireless G adapter. The other one is a friend's old Athlon 4 based laptop with a Linksys SRX cardbus wireless Gadapter. When both computers had their OS installed, I only used their wired internet connections to download all updates, drivers, etc. The internet worked fine on both computers at this time with both IE6 and Firefox 3.0.1. Then, I installed the wireless cards on their respective computers with the driver from the Netgear website on the desktop and the driver CD that came with the Linksys card on the laptop. Both wireless cards installed fine, and connected ok to my D-Link Gamer Lounge N router using WPA2, and remained connected the whole time. Now here is the problem: Randomly, when using the wireless or disabling the wireless and using wired ethernet, both browsers either have random "Page Load Errors" for Firefox and "Page cannot be displayed" errors for IE6. Now, common sense says that the wireless card is the problem, and that it should be removed. I did that (removed cards and uninstalled all drivers) and the internet is STILL broken. I even reinstalled Firefox and the wired LAN drivers to no avail. Does anyone know what the problem is? It is, of course, very frustrating.

BTW, Team Fortress 2 installed on my desktop in Windows 2000 has no connection problems to speak of.

-J.B.

 

Check to see what Network services are being loaded. You only need the MS login, tcp/ip, and file and printer sharing. There is 1 service that loads with wireless devices that causes problems. I do not recall the name, I do know it says for some type of network. Un check it an things will start working properly.

 

I haven't had the wireless adapter installed in my desktop for a while now so I tried disabling all of the services for the wired network connection, uninstalled the adapter from device manager, restarted, reinstalled the wired adapter and then reinstalled the three services that are used for that connection. The problem is still happening, but slightly less. I can be browsing the forums and sometimes the advertisements don't load, sometimes the entire "Latest Laptop Discussions" pane will not load, or the page will just get stuck halfway and just load text only, and sometimes the page itself will not load. All of this happens randomly, and affects all web browsers including the one built into Steam. However, downloads, networking and internet multiplayer gaming (TF2) are unaffected. I don't have any viruses either.

-J.B.

 

May be you have a virus.

 

So you can connect to IPs but not domains, am I correct? Start > run > cmd then ping google.com. No response, right? Then ping 4.2.2.2. response?

Okay, so do an ipconfig /flushdns command. Hope this solves it, if not, I'm here!

 

@ Wirelessman: I have Avast and I just installed and ran Malwarebytes and both found no infections.

@ Hep! When I pinged www.google.com, all 4 packets came back fine with a ping of 36ms. I also pinged 4.2.2.2 and got pings of 19, 18, 39, 39. I also flushed the DNS resolver cache. Still having the same issues.

-J.B.

 

Very interesting problem you have, J.B. Do you have any other non-2000 machines sharing your internet connection? If so, do they have any browser issues?

 

My parents have two Vista home-built machines and they have no internet problems at all. My sister has a Macbook Pro 2.0 with Tiger, and my dad has an HP zd8000 with Vista (both have 802.11g) and it has no problems with the internet over wireless. I am using a Compaq that I upgraded to a 500MHz Celeron and Windows XP SP2 and it works fine. I have Vista on the computer that has the issues, and it works fine (but Vista is slow on a Pentium 4).

one of my desktop's specs (the one that has issues obviously):
ASRock P4VT8
Intel Pentium 4 2.6c/512/800
2GB OCZ PC3200 DDR, single channel
VIA PT800/VT8237 chipset, with VIA Rhine II LAN
Windows 2000 Professional with Service Pack 4 (and updates)
80GB HDD
crappy Philips DVD burner
NVIDIA 7800GS 256MB AGP card
Creative Audigy 2 sound card w/ Firewire 400
ancient Hauppauge WinTV/Radio card
CyberHome 5.1 digital headphones on the sound card's S/PDIF output

A Netgear WG311v3 PCI 802.11g card was installed with drivers off of Netgear's website, but later completely uninstalled due to internet problems described previously.

The laptop (friend's laptop) that I put Windows 2000 Pro on:
HP Pavilion XH635
AMD Athlon 4 @ 1.1GHz
256MB SDRAM, single channel
Unknown chipset
Trident 3D Cyberblade video card
ESS integrated sound/modem
ADMTek Centaur-P LAN (no built-in wireless card)

I installed a brand new Linksys 802.11g cardbus adapter with SRX into this laptop. Internet worked fine, but after wireless card was installed with XP/2000 drivers off of the CD, internet browsers exhibited same issues mentioned above.

-Justin B.

 

After the wireless cards were installed, were any new protocols added?

 

I don't remember if any new protocols were added, as I had removed the WiFi adapter from my desktop and I no longer have access to the laptop. I could probably try adding the card again and see what protocols it installs. For my wired connection, all I have is Client for Microsoft Networks, File and Printer Sharing, and TCP/IP.

-J.B.

 

Try lowering your MTU to 1492 (def 1500). This effects web pages randomly depending on how their built.

 

Ok, I just read the Wikipedia article about Maximum Transmission Units. I saw a section of the article called "Jabbering." I am wondering if my Win2K machine is suddenly sending packets that are too big and causing the router to block the computer until it sends normal packets, which may explain mid-page hangs or instant page load errors, even though the LAN connection is still connected. I searched google for how to change the MTUs and a page told me that it was an entry in the registry, at this general location:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters\Interfaces

I added a DWORD called MTU into the registry in the folder that held the IP, subnet mask and gateway of the NIC card. I gave it a decimal value of 1500, and restarted the computer. I am still having the same problem, although it seems that I am only receiving Address Not Found errors now. The pages still hang mid-way through sometimes and once I get an Address Not Found error I usually get a string of them until I try to load a "good" webpage like NVIDIA.com

-J.B.