Member Avatar for bwjones

Okay, I'm in Ohio and my brother is in NY. So obviously from a pro or aspiring IT like myself there's only so much you can do over the phone. I had him check all the settings in the properties of the broadband connection and everything looks normal. Then I had him bring up the cmd terminal and check his IP addresses. Below the physical address fo r the nic card I was going to have him check the IP's and whether DHCP was on or not and he said there was no more lines below the nic address line. Anyone have experience with a problem like this? As far as I can tell it just seems to be a malfunctioning modem. Like I said "aspiring".


Thanks.

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by cbemerine

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This thread already has the right instincts — remote testing is limited, so collect targeted facts before calling the ISP. described that only the NIC physical address shows up; asked about the router and basic reboots; showed what a normal IP block looks like. The missing piece is a short, repeatable set of checks that distinguishes a local PC/NIC problem from a modem/ISP provisioning problem.

A quick sign to watch for: if the PC has an address in the 169.254.x.x range, Windows gave itself an APIPA address because it could not reach a DHCP server. That points to one of three areas: the NIC (disabled, driver or cable fault), the modem not offering DHCP, or the ISP not provisioning that modem. Ask the person on-site to check Device Manager for the network adapter status (disabled or a yellow warning), try a different Ethernet cable and port, and (if possible) test a second computer on the same modem to see whether it gets a routable IP.

If those hardware checks look okay, run a couple of lightweight checks to confirm whether the modem is responding and to reset Windows network stacks:

arp -a
netsh winsock reset
netsh int ip reset

Reboot after the netsh commands. If another machine also fails to get a lease, contact Road Runner and ask them to verify DHCP/provisioning for the modem (have the modem MAC/serial ready). If only this PC fails after the above, reinstall or roll back the NIC driver and confirm the adapter isn’t set to any special authentication mode.

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Member Avatar for zelkea

Does he have a router in place. If so I would remove the router from the equation and unplug the router for at least 10 seconds and reboot the computer. Which lights are light on his modem? If you are walking him through over the phone you can reboot or cmd ipconfig /release then ipconfig /renew.

AJZ

Member Avatar for cbemerine

. . .no more lines below the nic address line. . .

I will assume that you had him do an ipconfig cmd in the cmd window (MSDOS prompt). He should see:

IP Configuration Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection: Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . :
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

If he only did above and is missing the subnet mask and default gateway then I have experienced this when I had a problem with my names NOT resolving (i.e. a name like yahoo coverted to the IP address (xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx; where xxx is a number from 0 - 255.

I had been using static IP addressing and Brighthouse changed something on their side and my names were no longer resolving. To fix I simply:
1) bypassed my router (physically plugged the cat 5 cable - looks like a bigger then normal phone jack type of plug, RJ 45 - directly into the cable modem.

2) Opened my Local Area Connection Window (Control Panel / Network and Dial-Up Conections) and selected the 'Properties'

3) Selected Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) / Properties

4) selected both "Optain an IP address automatically" and "Obtain DNS server address automatically"

5) Shutdown the computer

6) powered off the Cable modem (counted to 10 Mississippi)

7) powered back on Cable modem

8) powered on Computer

Voila could surf the internet...but with no firewall/router yikes.

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