Hi, this seems like kind of a wierd one that i'm having. I just reformatted my computer due to a bunch of virus issues. Got all the drivers reinstalled and got onto the internet. For some reason the internet has been running kind of slow and a lot of the time in internet explorer and firefox it will say a page cannot be displayed and that it cannot detect an internet connection. So in IE i'll run the connection test, and it still won't find a connection. Yet I'll have Utorrent running and AIM and they will both be working with no problems.

The wierd part is, that I'm connected with an ethernet cable through my wireless router. So troubleshooting, just to make sure it wasn't the router, I unplugged the cable going from my computer to the router, and just plugged that directly into the back of the cable modem. When I do this windows says that I have a network cable unplugged. and On the back of the computer where the cable plugs in, there's usually an orange and green light that come on, and it's just the orange one. I went through every setting imaginable, switched cables, and reinstalled the drivers.. still says that the network cable is unplugged.

The second I switch the cable back into the router, and the router to the modem. My internet works again. but it's still flakey and will give me the page cannot be displayed all the time. Any help with this will be appreciated.

Thanks,

Kevin

Also, when I try to log into my router. the screen looks like this http://pic19.picturetrail.com/VOL103.../279116058.jpg

it's definitely missing some tabs.

do you have dns servers correctly set up on the machine?

Party,

Is your modem cable or dsl?

Were there recently any storms(lightning) or power outages in your area? I see this a lot with consumer class routers/modems. A power spike or brown out will often make the devices function very strange. On multiple instances I have even seen where the modem will not accept physical connections from any other device other than the router(which seems to be your case)

It seems like you've gone through all the proper troubleshooting such as plugging into the modem directly, switching out cables etc.

I would swap out the modem and see if that fixes your problem.

The only other thing I would suggest would be to hard reset the router(and maybe udpate the firmware while youre at it). Its not uncommon for linksys(especially version 5 and newer) to be flakey.

Wow, so far so good. Comcast came while I was at work, and from what I understand all they did was replace the cable modem. On bandwidthtest.com yesterday I got a 1.5megabit speed, today with the new modem it came in at 6.5. And the router's homepage looks normal, without any updates. I'm suprised a bad modem could cause all that. The only thing I haven't had time to check yet is if the modem works plugged directly into the computer. Thanks for all the help guys.

Alright, so I tried opening up some ports on the router, and when you click to save settings, it says that changes were saved correctly and then refreshes the screen, and the changes are gone. Then I opened up Utorrent to change to the new open ports and they still don't work. also, whenever I have utorrent on, firefox and internet explorer still basically shut down on me. I can't even log into 192.168.1.1 This never used to happen. I've only got one thing downloading on utorrent, I used to have 5 things going at once and still be able to access the internet. also, aim continues to work through all of this. And I downloaded the new firmware for the router (wrt54g v6) it's a .bin file. how do I install this?

Im not near a linksys router so im going to have to walk you through it from memory.(keep this page open for reference while you do it) If you have a battery backup id suggest plugging the router into it before attempting the upgrade. If you login to the router (192.168.1.1) and go to the "Administration" page there should be a subtab called 'firmware upgrade' or something to that effect. Click on that link and it will bring you to a page that asks you to upload a file. Click browse and go to the location you have the .bin file. The whole process takes about a minute. The power light will blink during the process while it is updating the firmware. After the light stops blinking wait a good 10-20 seconds before attempting the access the web management of the router otherwise it often causes the router to hang and resulting in it needing a reboot. After you're sure the firmware is done updating go ahead and push the reset button in for 10 seconds to clear the ram. After that if the router isnt crippled it should function a little better.

Thanks a lot xgizmox, I finally got the firmware updated, and now it saves changes. Once I changed the ports on utorrent everything started running just the way it should.