What has control of my PCs?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jerry
  • Start date Start date
J

Jerry

I have a Peer to Peer network with 5 PCs connected to a
router that connects to a cable modem. This setup has
worked well for 2 years.

During a few days before Christmas I had used 2 of the
computers, and also had performed Windows, McAfee, and
Zone Alarm updates (as Administrator) - and also installed
new programs (not the same on each). One computer, a
laptop, is left on 100% of the time to retrieve emails and
be a quick access to the internet... so they were both
active on the network at the same time off and on - the
other 3 computers were not on during this timeframe.

At some point on each computer I realized I no longer had
access to the Internet - not even through the dialup modem
to AOL. I can no longer see the other computer over the
network, nor can I ping the router, or any IP - in fact, I
cannot even bring up the router's settings screen, which
is done over the network (IP 192.168.0.1).

Then I discovered in Zone Alarm that the network that
these are connected to is not my router's gateway IP
(192.168.0.0) - which has always been the norm. My ISPs IP
starts with 68.4 , but the network's IP that I see is
169.254.0.0. When I bring up I.E. and try to get a Web
page, I get the message that the page is not accessable...
what gives?? I also tried directly connecting one PC to
the modem - no difference.

I disconnected the net cables from these PCs and booted up
my other 3 PCs - they all have Internet access and the
network IP they are connected to is the router's -
192.168.0.0... and everything works normally on them.

Can anyone give me the answer as to what happened here?
Please help!
 
It appears that the DHCP service on your router is down. The 169.254.x.y
address is the APIPA address space assigned when no DHCP server is
available.

Try restarting the router and then using IPCONFIG /rewnew to renew the
IP addresses at each client station.

Brian
 
Listen carefully. This is your problem. Cable modems and
cable routers connected together use DHCP to assign leased
ip addresses. Usually, they start with 192.168.0.1. A bug
with Windows 9X, XP, 2000 ... will reassign the ip address
of a working nic(s) with 169.254.00 addresses when certain
apps are installed. The Zone Alarm probably had nothing to
do with this problem. It's a Windows issue. To fix this
you need to do 3 things.

1) Make sure all the network settings for each computer
under Internet Protocal tcp/ip setings are set
for "obtain ip address automatically." Then go the
command line and remove the bogus 169.254.00 route
on all computers at the command line using the
statment. C:\>route delete 169.254.0.0

2) Flush the DNS settings on the computers that don't work
using the command line statement:
C:\>ipconfig /flushdns

3) Reboot your cable modem to reassign ip addresses
to all computers connected to the cable modem.
All the computers should now be able to browse again.

Your welcome,

Secman777
 
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