Help me get my Dell to work with certain connection types again.

June 26, 2004 7:11 AM

My wonderful Dell has a quirk: suddenly streaming media, antivirus updates, and MSN messenger are no longer able to connect. My netwrok settings 'seem' okey-dokey, so short of a long ass tech support call to India*, what gives?
*Not that I have any misgivings about that fabulous region.
posted by moonbird to Computers & Internet (12 answers total)

I think to help you out we'd need a few more details ;) What's your Internet connection--cable, DSL, modem, LAN (office/dormitory/home network)?

And since you only mention streaming media, antivirus and IM, does that mean everything else is working? (If I make the assumption you're posting from said Dell, well, that answers my question--but I don't assume :))

The only thing I can think of off-hand is that perhaps you use a proxy for those services and the proxy is down, but having the same proxy for all 3 things would be rather unusual, and this is just a random idea off the top of my head.

But yea...I'm sure that others and myself could help if we know more about the situation!
posted by cyrusdogstar at 8:02 AM on June 26, 2004

Response by poster: whoops, yes indeed, i did leave a bit out. it's a cable modem, don'y use a proxy, and everything else works, except POP mail (which i've pretty much stopped using anyway). THANKS!
posted by moonbird at 8:19 AM on June 26, 2004

Hmm, curious indeed. More questions: what version of Windows are you using, do you have any kind of firewall (Windows firewall, ZoneAlarm, whatever, or a physical firewall/router between you and the cablemodem) and have you looked around the support section of your ISP's website yet? (Who is your ISP, for that matter, although it won't help much...Comcast? Charter?)

Heck, here's some more: what exact kind of streaming media are you trying to use? RealPlayer? Streaming Quicktime (if so, in a browser [which one?] or QuickTime Player?)? Etc.

Right now, I'm guessing it could be two things, either some really funky networking issue upstream (at the ISP, or at a router in your house) which is messing with certain types of network traffic; OR you have gotten malware which is similarly messing up your Windows networking code.

I'm leaning towards the former simply because malware-caused network issues are almost always either A) total loss of connectivity or B) website redirection/blocking.
posted by cyrusdogstar at 9:05 AM on June 26, 2004

Response by poster:

windows firewall (i was told to stop using zona alarm)

ISP is charter

real and windows media player associated streaming files

using winxp and most recent IE. won't work with mozilla firefox either.

yeah, i'm curious about #2 as well. just switched from norton AV to avast, which picked up three viruses and all of these weird gaming files in my norton protected file (i don't to any gaming). what's a good method to detect malware? (i'm gonna google that now...)

posted by moonbird at 9:12 AM on June 26, 2004

Your provider might have blocked some ports, for security purposes. If you can , connect via dialup to some other provider and check whether it works. And also try swithching of windows Firewall.
posted by signal at 9:13 AM on June 26, 2004

of = off, obviously. Also, IE, and Firefox don't work?

You could also unistall your NIC, and re-boot so they re-install, then reconfigure everything (write everything down, first).
posted by signal at 9:15 AM on June 26, 2004

Response by poster: it's the streaming media and other things that don't work in the browsers... they themselves work fine.
posted by moonbird at 9:22 AM on June 26, 2004

Response by poster: i'm running spykiller right now, and it's amazing the shit it's pulling up, hopefully this'll fix it.
posted by moonbird at 9:24 AM on June 26, 2004

I second signal's ideas; my next suggestion would have been to turn off the firewall, and the NIC reinstall (if something went kludgy with the NIC driver, uninstalling and rebooting would refresh it).

More questions: when did this start happening, and did _anything_ change around that time? Installed a program, downloaded a file, ISP connectivity dropped for a few minutes, etc...

On preview: Aha. Yea, also try getting and running Ad-Aware (http://www.lavasoftusa.com) and/or SpyBot (google for it, dunno the address off-hand).
posted by cyrusdogstar at 9:25 AM on June 26, 2004

I've heard that viruses have been known to block access to all the major anti-virus websites, too.
posted by gramcracker at 9:52 AM on June 26, 2004

Response by poster: spykiller found 173 files, but i've got to buy it to try to do anything about it... i'm trying spybot and adaware now.
posted by moonbird at 10:12 AM on June 26, 2004

also possibly worth having a look into hijackthis and if you're on windows2000 have a look in \WINNT\system32\drivers\etc open up the hosts file there and delete anything that's in it (save the empty file).
posted by juv3nal at 12:34 PM on June 26, 2004