windows xp: someone make me a drano-tini, please
i have never seen so many bizarre, mysterious, that-shouldn’t-be-possible types of networking problems as with windows. you can blame it on software, users, hardware, whatever… but i have never seen problems like this with computers running osx or linux. take for example the problem i’m dealing with today.
i have a user who calls me this morning and says he can’t connect to the internet. or e-mail. usually this is a standard type of complaint that takes 30 seconds to troubleshoot and resolve. however, this one is different because as of now, an hour later, it is still unresolved and i already want to drink drano.
basic troubleshooting. first things first, reboot. lord knows that fixes probably 75% of windows problems anyway, but we have no such luck here. so let’s see if we can figure out what the problem is. why can’t the user connect? i attempt to ping our router:
Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]
(C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp.
C:\>ping 192.168.111.1
Pinging 192.168.111.1 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 192.168.111.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.111.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.111.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.111.1: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64
Ping statistics for 192.168.111.1:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 0ms, Maximum = 0ms, Average = 0ms
well, he’s obviously connected to the network and passing traffic to/from the router without any trouble. how about the proxy server:
C:\>ping guardian
Ping request could not find host guardian. Please check the name and try again.
what the heck? let’s try pinging the ip address of the proxy:
C:\>ping 192.168.111.6
Pinging 192.168.111.6 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 192.168.111.6: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.111.6: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.111.6: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.111.6: bytes=32 time<1ms TTL=64
Ping statistics for 192.168.111.6:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 0ms, Maximum = 0ms, Average = 0ms
that worked fine, so apparently it’s a DNS issue. i checked the DNS settings, it pulled the correct ones from DHCP but i set them manually just to be sure. still a no go. well, let’s try to ping the e-mail server, which also provides DNS:
C:\>ping 192.168.111.2
Pinging 192.168.111.2 with 32 bytes of data:
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Ping statistics for 192.168.111.2:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 0, Lost = 4 (100% loss),
now this is really weird. i can ping that server from any other computer on the network. i’ve checked and double checked all the network settings on the offending computer, there’s nothing wrong. so i think maybe the switch is flaking out on me, so i move the cable to a different physical port. no luck.
so basically, i have a user’s computer that connects to the network and can ping every other computer on the network just fine, except for the computer that provides DNS and e-mail services. all of the other computers can use the DNS and e-mail services without a problem. how is this even possible?
if you have any ideas, please let me know. otherwise, just stop by with some gin, drano and olives and make me a cocktail to put me out of my misery.
