Member Avatar for Nat

Hello,

I've come here from time to time for tips and such.. but now I just don't know what is going on with my computer.. My husband and I each use a computer connected through a router. The comps are under 6 months old and have run fine for about 4 months but now all of a sudden we lost our connection. First mine then about a minute later he lost his. (we were online at the time on websites we'd been on many times before. The cable company can read our modem from their end and the light is on, but we can't get online through it. Now to make it more confusing, I tried connecting my husbands computer through a USB cable and it worked, we got a message saying "windows recovered from a serious error" and he could connect to the internet. His computer now can run through the router (but not directly through the cable modem). Well I tried connecting my computer to the USB and sure enough it'll run through the USB I get the same "recovery" message (which is vague) but I can't connect through the regular ethernet cable (the oversized phonecord looking one). Our cable company is telling us our network cards must have gone bad but I think it's kind of weird that both would go out at the exact same time and that my husbands' comp has recovered. Now I kept getting a message saying that "wupdater" wasn't responding and it wouldn't let me shut down my computer without clicking the "end now" button. At first I thought it was windows updater but after reading someone elses problems with the same wupdater I ran Spybot search and destroy, wupdater is gone, my comp restarts fine now but I still can't get online (unless I use a usb cable but that defeats the purpose of using a router) I've switched my husbands' ethernet cord with mine but that doesn't make any difference.. should I wipe my disks and reinstall windows? does this seem a software problem, or could we really have one or two networking cards that went bad? As you probably can tell I really don't know as much about computers as most of you seem to, any ideas would be very, very welcome..
Thanks so much!
Nat

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Generated

A few focused checks that answer the gaps in the thread and help distinguish a hardware failure from a transient network/Windows problem.

Advice from and correctly points at modem/router state as the most likely cause when both machines drop at once. Start by confirming link and addressing at the PC side (these tests separate physical/link-layer failures from DHCP/Windows-stack problems).

  • Confirm link lights on the PC NIC and the router/modem port with the cable inserted. A steady or blinking LED means a physical link exists; no LED usually signals a bad cable, port or NIC.

  • Capture the current IP and lease behavior from a command prompt. An APIPA address (169.254.x.x) means no DHCP lease; this is diagnostic data.

    ipconfig /all
ipconfig /release
ipconfig /renew
ipconfig /flushdns
netsh winsock reset
netsh int ip reset

  • Check Device Manager for yellow warnings; disable/re-enable or uninstall the NIC driver and let Windows redetect it. Try the latest driver from the NIC or motherboard vendor if available.

  • Inspect the router/modem admin page for the DHCP client list and any MAC filtering. A modem that “remembers” the last MAC can be cleared by fully powering it down for 30+ seconds; a factory reset of the router will clear config but will require reconfiguration of any ISP login or wireless keys, so use the reset only if needed (as noted).

If the above still fails, boot a known-good external OS (Linux live CD/USB) to test the NIC independent of Windows. If the live OS gets online, the problem is Windows-side and reinstalling Windows is a last resort — prefer system restore, driver reinstallation, or a repair install first. If multiple devices and the router fail intermittently, consider surge damage as a possible hardware cause.

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Member Avatar for antioed

Hello,

Our cable company is telling us our network cards must have gone bad but I think it's kind of weird that both would go out at the exact same time and that my husbands' comp has recovered.

Nat

They'll say anything to get you off the phone although this is entirely possible...my house got struck by lightning and even though all the pcs were on surge protection the cable line was NOT...the surge came in over the cable I guess and then fried every network card that was attached to the router and the router itself. I doubt that's your problem though. If you go into network connections you would most likely see a "Cable Disconnected" status on the Local Area Connection when it's attached to the router or it will go back and forth between "cable disconnected" and "Enabled".
You probably just need to reboot the cable modem; you didn't say that you've done that yet. Generally most cable networks only allow one device to go online at a time. Most likely if the USB is the only one that works it's because the cable modem keeps track of which device was connected until you flush it's records by unplugging the power. I would reboot all devices/computers and try it again with ethernet (funny big phone cable) without the USB plugged in. Reboot in this order: Cable modem-->Router-->Computers

Good luck!

Member Avatar for Nat

hmm ok did that, my husbands' comp is up (still) but mine has an x saying limited or no connectivity. to reboot should I plug the oversized phone cord directly into the modem or leave it in the router?
Thanks so much for your help all the same :)!
Nat

Member Avatar for Nat

WOOHOO!! ok I don't know why it took a few minutes but my comp's online :))
THANKYOUTHANKYOUTHANKYOUTHANKYOUthankyouthankyouthankyou... :))
Ok anyone have any idea why it booted me off in the first place (so I can *not* do whatever I did again??)

Member Avatar for Junior89

with my experince with networking thay are a pain and are very touchy. THey sometimes work and sometimes dont just leave it alone and see what happens

Member Avatar for bentkey

You probably didn't DO anything. The process Antioed described is a common way of clearing up a lot of spurrious DSL or cable type issues. Unless it starts happening frequently, you should just follow the procedure and don't give it a thought.

Member Avatar for Junior89

You probably didn't DO anything. The process Antioed described is a common way of clearing up a lot of spurrious DSL or cable type issues. Unless it starts happening frequently, you should just follow the procedure and don't give it a thought.

^^^^^^
that was a fancy way of saying what i said. :rolleyes:

Member Avatar for bentkey

;) Actually, it wasn't quite. And if you look at the times, we were writing them at the same time.

Member Avatar for Dark_Omen

I have had the same problem before with routers. The way I fixed it was to reset the router itself. So what this means is I reset it to factory state, then I set it up again. Just so you know I was using a linksys router and I don't know if this applies to other companies' routers.

Member Avatar for antioed

...most of those home network routers need reboots often although I've heard the new Linksys ones are a lot better about that.

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