Setting up Dial up Connections

[TK-421]

I know I should be able to get this stupid thing working but i cant. I need to get a shitty old win95 computer to use a dial up connection to connect to the net. It works fine on my computer, with the same modem, but on the win95 machine it will only connect to bigpond. It wont find any servers, cant ping anything.

I must be forgetting somthing and just need some input on what i should check cos i cant be bothered redoing the connection again. (Have redone about 5 times, even followed the instructions on the bigpond website).
Any ideas would be great.

[tikdoph]

Originally posted by TK-421
I know I should be able to get this stupid thing working but i cant. I need to get a shitty old win95 computer to use a dial up connection to connect to the net. It works fine on my computer, with the same modem, but on the win95 machine it will only connect to bigpond. It wont find any servers, cant ping anything.

I must be forgetting somthing and just need some input on what i should check cos i cant be bothered redoing the connection again. (Have redone about 5 times, even followed the instructions on the bigpond website).
Any ideas would be great.
Ok, so you can dial into Bigpong, it'll authenticate, accept your username and password, and log on, but it won't let you do anything on the net after that, correct?

Assuming that I've understood you correctly, it may simply be that your Dialup Networking is hosed. Try pinging 127.0.0.1 ... if you get a valid response back, then your TCP stack is ok. If it returns an "Unknown Host" message (or similar), I would suggest doing a DNR of Dialup Networking.

Click on Start -> Settings -> Control Panel -> Add/Remove Programs -> Windows Setup tab -> Highlight "Communications" -> Click "Details" button -> Untick "Dialup Networking" -> If a "yes/no" dialog appears, click "Yes" -> Click OK -> Reboot computer... then go back in through the same process and retick "Dialup Networking" and again, reboot the computer. Make sure that you have your Win95 installation CD handy, in case Windows asks for it.

Then just recreate your Bigpong connection from scratch, making sure that you've got all the settings correct. Chances are that it's not a settings issue, as you should still be able to ping another site from the command prompt whether your settings are correct or not. Just out of curiosity, what did you ping? Was it a website or an IP address? This can make a difference as sometimes you can successfully ping an IP address, but you may not be able to ping the corresponding website. This is a DNS issue... no point going into it yes unless we can definitely identify that as the problem.

You can also try going to cexx.org/lspfix.htm (http://cexx.org/lspfix.htm) to download LSPFix. This useful little app has a reasonably decent success rate at fixing Dialup Networking problems caused by things like spyware and malware, where you can connect to your ISP, but you can't connect to anything on the net.

Let us know how you go.

DNR = Delete 'N' Reinstall

[TK-421]

Cheers for that. I wont be able to try until tuesday but it sounds like it will work.
I tried pinging my ADSL connection's IP address which timed out.
Thanks, i will let you know.

[oracle]

From my (4 years helpdesk) experience, browsing issues are most commonly the result of a TCP/IP corruption.

Provided there's no external influence affecting your connection (ie. firewall) then the other likely problem would be a corrupted Winsock2 (or winsock, depending on the version of your Win95)

One way to quickly discern whether it is a DNS, TCP/IP, or Winsock issue is with a simple test. Try to load a website IP in your browser, for example: typing 216.239.37.99 in the address bar should yield the Google website. If it does, then you've got a DNS issue, make sure you've got the correct DNS's.

If it doesn't load, then it will give you one of two message. If it takes a while to load, and then says "Page could not be displayed" then it's most likely a corrupt TCP/IP, and it needs to be removed and reinstalled from the Network Control Panel.

If it doesn't load, and almost immediately reports an error dialog that says "Internet Explorer could not open the search page" then it's a Winsock issue.

The reason I prefer this method over ping tests is because of Winsock. If you can ping IP's, but not host addresses... it doesn't always mean it's a DNS issue. Alternatively another way to check is if you can ping IP's, but not hosts, then try to telnet to your mail servers IP on port 110 or 25; or try to telnet to an FTP servers IP on port 21. If it can't connect, then Winsock is screwed.

[tikdoph]

Originally posted by oracle
From my (4 years helpdesk) experience, browsing issues are most commonly the result of a TCP/IP corruption.

Provided there's no external influence affecting your connection (ie. firewall) then the other likely problem would be a corrupted Winsock2 (or winsock, depending on the version of your Win95)

One way to quickly discern whether it is a DNS, TCP/IP, or Winsock issue is with a simple test. Try to load a website IP in your browser, for example: typing 216.239.37.99 in the address bar should yield the Google website. If it does, then you've got a DNS issue, make sure you've got the correct DNS's.

If it doesn't load, then it will give you one of two message. If it takes a while to load, and then says "Page could not be displayed" then it's most likely a corrupt TCP/IP, and it needs to be removed and reinstalled from the Network Control Panel.

If it doesn't load, and almost immediately reports an error dialog that says "Internet Explorer could not open the search page" then it's a Winsock issue.

The reason I prefer this method over ping tests is because of Winsock. If you can ping IP's, but not host addresses... it doesn't always mean it's a DNS issue. Alternatively another way to check is if you can ping IP's, but not hosts, then try to telnet to your mail servers IP on port 110 or 25; or try to telnet to an FTP servers IP on port 21. If it can't connect, then Winsock is screwed.
It took you 4 years on a helpdesk to come to that conclusion? Heck, I had it worked out in less than a month.

Sorry, but you should know that relying on the browser to troubleshoot isn't always reliable, especially if it's IE. If it's the browser itself that's screwed (and that's happening more and more often these days due to the increasing presence of spyware/malware), then you're often going to get "Page cannot be displayed" anyways. If you can ping a site on both the URL and the IP address, but can't get the page to load, then it's likely to be a browser issue. This isn't uncommon with Internet Explorer. Either running a repair of IE (in Win9X/Me) or, failing that, completely removing IE with IEradicator (http://www.litepc.com/ieradicator.html) and reinstalling from scratch usually does the trick. In WinXP, DNRing IE via Add/Remove Windows Components will usually fix this.

I've found that removing and reinstalling Dialup Networking via Windows Setup usually has a better success rate than simply removing it through the Network Control Panel, as the NCP will occasionally neglect to bind adapters together properly if things are done in a piecemeal fashion. I'd rather do things properly the first time than have to go back again because the lazy approach didn't work.

Oh yeah... you can't assume that everyone knows as much as you do, so rather than just telling someone that it's a Winsock issue if X occurs and assuming that they'll know how to fix it, you might also want to help them by pointing them in the right direction to go to actually get it fixed. That's called putting the help in helpdesk, which it seems you've neglected to do here. ;)

[druid]

This thread has now been purged from off-topic ramblings and the references to them. To the parties involved: shame on you and don't do it again.

[oracle]

tikdoph... I didn't say it took me 4 years to figure that out, I'm just pointing out that I have a lot of experience with these sorts of things. Seriously, where do you get off attacking me? I was merely providing a few other suggestions.

It's worth mentioning that I have never needed to reinstall COMMS, or DUN. I found out long ago that browsing or connection issues can be solved via other methods.

Doing a browser test with a customer is not only quicker, it's also easier for them to follow, especially when they don't speak english too well. Granted, it could be a browser issue, which is why I said "Provided there's no external influence affecting your connection" meaning spyware, firewall, etc.

Finally, I was well aware that I didn't go through how to fix winsock, but I felt compelled to mention it, as you didn't mention it at all. That's not an attack on you... TCP/IP is certainly the more common cause of browsing issues. The purpose of my post was not to to go into great detail, but simply to provide another avenue if all others had been exhausted.

[TK-421]

Thanks for your help. I forgot that I had set DNS and shit when I had it connected to my ADSL. As soon as that was removed it found the sites with no problems.
Another networking lesson learned.