Dell GX260 Windows XP and DHCP connection problems

[AmigaPete]

I thought I would post this here as a last attempt at getting this thing connecting properly... bought a Dell GX260 off lease with XP Pro that could only ever connect at 10MB/s. I thought that was odd, but I could live with it. Then tried to hookup my kids Nintendo Wi-Fi, got that working, but then it crapped out and since then couldn't get the thing to even get a normal connection to my LinkSys Router. Have since reinstalled XP (twice) and even tried Win 2K (once) with reformats in all cases. Even removed the battery to reset everything in CMOS/BIOS. Now I am back to XP. I have done everything I can think of to try and troubleshoot - cable is good, port is good, computer is on same WORKGROUP, XP firewall is off, onboard NIC is reported to be good using diagnostic (passes all the tests), software has been installed in the proper order... I even tried to install a PCI NIC but that gave me more problems (couldn't complete the software/driver install for some weird reason) to the point where after I physically uninstalled it I could not remove it from the system - weird stuff going on there.

Problem is that DHCP is initiated, but somehow cannot connect to my router, then an automatic IP is generated (169.254.144.101) using a DNS of 255.255.255.255 - router is set up as 192.168.1.1. I get a green link light but cannot ping anything. I have tried to connect manually but still cannot connect. I have built small networks at work and have done my home network by myself so I know what to do (it should be almost automatic) but this thing is driving me crazy.

Any ideas?

Thanks,
Pete

[kd7ota]

Strange that it just doesnt want to connect.  It has to be the router. Doubt that windows or anything is bad on that side of things.  My brother has had two Netgear Wireless routers just mysteriously stop for no good reason. Try a few things.

1.Reset the Linksys Router from the little button on back, so that completely resets everything to default.

2.Once its reset, try to http into the router, usually login and password is admin and password is admin, depending on the router, just look under it.

3.If you cannot even sign into the router itself, and still will not hand out a IP address, sorry to say there is a good chance your router just crapped.

I want to know the model number too. I fixed up a Linksys router that happened to have a crappy firmware which would crap it out shortly after 5 minutes, and reverting back to an old firmware fixed it right back up.

Hope this helps!  :-)

[AmigaPete]

kd7ota,

Thanks for the quick reply... it is a BEFSR41 with the latest firmware - there was a buggy firmware that had problems with maintaining the WAN lease but I have long since upgraded the firmware.

I did reset the router, and like I said, I am pretty sure it isn't the router because I have two other machines hooked up to it working fine and I can hook up other machines using the same cable and port as my GX260 and have no problems. What I will try, later maybe, is hooking the GX260 directly up to my cablemodem.

I have tried pinging the router and other machines - "Destination host unreachable".

Pete

[daverobev]

*Edit* Oops I see you know what 169.blah is - just ignore anything you already know

That 169.x.x.x address is what windows sets when it's set to DHCP but can't get an address. Okay, so the router is known good, the cable is known good.

A couple of things to check.

1. Is it a crossover cable? If your other devices support autosense, they will "reorient" themselves to connecting, whereas your GX260 may not be able to do this.

2. Does the port have bent pins?

3. Can you set your ip manually, another computer's ip manually, and then be able to ping each other? They will need to be on the same subnet - best to choose ip's like 10.0.0.1 and 10.0.0.2, mask of 255.255.255.0, and leave the rest blank. Then try to ping one from the other (you should use a crossover cable for this! Or go through a hub/switch, NOT a router! If this works with the "known good" cable you may have a crossover cable, or one device at least supports autosensing...)

4. It could be software - odd if you've reinstalled. A guy at work had a laptop that "somehow" got set to 10mbps rather than auto. I have no idea why. Assuming you have the proper full intel drivers (if I remember rightly, for a GX260, it's a pro 100/ve? Download from intel.com...), just check through all the panes and make sure you don't see "10mbps half duplex" or something silly on network speed.

If it does odd stuff with known good pci network cards as well, I would suggest the motherboard may be slightly knackered. Something about the southbridge (I think that'd be the right place for onboard ethernet as well as pci stuff). Or it might be something in the bios.

[Zac67]

Have you tried just configuring a static IP address? Sometimes XP is very funny about DHCP.

[AmigaPete]

Well guys, I just connected the GX260 directly to my cablemodem and she connected no problem at 100MB/s!! I am writing this using it now. So I will have to see about reseting my router and starting over from there. At least I now know that this thing can connect at 100MB/s. Stupid computer!

Thanks for all the help,
Pete

[daverobev]

Sounds like the cable you're using is a crossover then! If you're using the same cable to go direct to the cable modem as you were via the router...

orange-stripe
orange
green-stripe
blue
blue-stripe
green
brown-stripe
brown

Is a normal cable crimped in the standard way - if one end IS like that, and the other end isn't, it's a crossover. Or of course if the two ends are different at all...