Member Avatar for g2daizh

Hi i'm having some trouble connecting to the internet in my apartment complex. Its a wired ethernet connection that plugs into the wall. I was connected on saturday and when i came back to the apartment on sunday afternoon the connection wouldnt work. My girlfriends computer works in the same connection, same chord, but when i plug my computer in it says i have local access only. We both run on windows vista.

I've tried to restart it, repair with windows diagnostics, disable/reenable the connection and nothing is working. I'm sure it's not the apartment complex's fault since the other computer works. I'm just wondering why one computer has local only access while the other one works.

Any help would be great. Thank you.

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by blud

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Short expert follow‑up to the situation described by and the useful pointer from : because the same wall jack and cable work with your girlfriend’s PC, the problem is very likely on the affected machine (driver/adapter/configuration) or with how the building’s network recognizes that machine. The checks below focus on diagnostics and fixes that weren’t covered in the thread.

Quick, non‑destructive checks

  • Verify the NIC’s link/activity LEDs at the PC and the wall jack; a steady/link light shows the physical layer is up.
  • Try a different network interface (USB‑to‑Ethernet adapter or a laptop) on the same port to see if a different MAC/driver works.
  • Boot a short-lived live OS (USB Linux) to rule out Windows‑only problems quickly.

Windows‑side actions (safe order)

  • In Device Manager uninstall the problematic NIC, reboot so Windows redetects it, then update or roll back the driver if needed. Turn off any adapter power‑saving option in the device’s Power Management tab.

  • Reset the Windows network stack and then restart the machine:

    netsh winsock reset
netsh int ip reset resetlog.txt

    Reboot after running these.

If the building registers devices by MAC

  • Some managed apartment networks bind service to a machine’s hardware address. As a test you can temporarily set the NIC’s locally administered/network address (Device Manager → Adapter → Advanced → Network Address) to match the working machine’s value; if that restores full connectivity, ask the building/ISP to register your NIC or keep using a different adapter.

Other useful traces

  • Check Windows Event Viewer (Windows Logs → System) for network or service errors and temporarily disable any third‑party firewall/security suite. If all else fails, swapping the NIC or using an external USB adapter will quickly confirm a hardware fault.
Member Avatar for blud

This is generally caused when the computer isn't able to obtain an 'IP Address' from the DHCP server. Basically, the device that is providing access to the internet through that cable hands out IP addresses based on the Hardware ID that your computer identifies itself as.

If your running windows, open a 'Command Prompt' and do 'ipconfig /all'

If it shows your IP Address as a 169.x ip, then it is unable to obtain an ip address, which *can* be on the complex's end if they run the DHCP Server, since your MAC address (Hardware ID) could be blocked by their server. One way to troubleshoot this, is connect your girlfriends computer to the cable, and do the same command 'ipconfig /all', and write down all of the information. Then disconnect her computer, and to use that information. If it works, it is a problem with the DHCP leases, and you should contact the provider, if it doesn't, then we can try some other troubleshooting steps, but we'll need the output of that 'ipconfig /all' command.

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