How to fix a internet Connection Problem

Here's the deal. A friend of mine's computer had problems connecting to the internet so he asked me to come by and help. He is connected through a wireless linksys router and both computers have XP. He said that about two weeks ago his internet stopped working when some message came up saying that someone else had his IP address, or something of that nature. It said that he was receiving a signal but he could not connect to the internet. I checked his TCP/IP settings and there was nothing listed under any of the ip or dns addresses. So I replaced his winsock registries, disabled DHCP and let NetBIOS override, gave him a static IP address, diabled LMHOSTS lookup, did the netsh ip reset, and spyware scanned his computer (although not in that order). I also went to the computer with the router and made sure that XP's firewall was turned off. Now at some point after this his internet connection started working, great.

Then he calls me the next day and says it isn't working. So today I go over and to check and he's right. Now it used to say that he had two internet connections, a Local Area 6 that was 'unplugged' and his 'Wireless Connection 2', which is what I used last time. This time though, there was a third connection. It was just labled '8af7'. Also when I went to select the different connections it kept telling me that the connections weren't WEP enabled and that they weren't secure. If I try to connect through the 'Wireless Connection 2' and load internet explorer it wastes no time giving me the cannot find server screen. Yet if I try to use the new '8af7' connection it takes forever to eventually tell me that it can't find the server. If I try to ping anything it doesn't work as well.

Now I would try to get on the router computer but I'm having a problem with that one as well. Maybe some one in here can solve this before the Windows XP forum can. Whenever I try to log on to the computer it just kicks me right back to the log in screen. It says 'logging in...', flashes to the background, then goes back to the log in screen and says 'logging off...' and then 'saving your settings...'

I'm going to try to see what else I can do but I figured I needed some help. Thanks for going ove

This question was answered on November 24, 2004. Much of the information contained herein may have changed since posting.

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I have some more information...

The computer with the internet problem is a...

HP Notebook PC

Windows XP

Intel Celeron 1.20GHz

480MB RAM

Linksys Instant Wireless Network PC Card V3.0

Also, there are now 4 wireless internet connections it is showing me They are called, default, Wireless, 8fa7, and linksys None of them seem to work although at times they show some signal strength Like the linksys was showing me a link quality of 6% and a signal strength of 20% Also the 8fa7 connections requires that I enter a Network key (WEP) although I have no idea what it is

I am going to go back over there (he lives across the street) and throw every program I know at it See what I come up with In the mean time any advice would be great.

About the author

Posted by Michael of Katharine Gibbs School - New York on November 24, 2004

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