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Need help with wired network failure in small office
Hello, I am the son of the owners of a small town newspaper, and am the normal computer technician for the office. There was recently a major computer failure, someone brought in a virus on a flash drive, and the virus scanner did not catch it in time, the machines were running Windows XP. When the virus was removed, it took a chunk of windows with it, and the computers refused to boot.
I asked my parents (who are the owners of the paper) if they wanted to try it out with windows 7, that way the UAC should catch any future viruses before they have a chance to embed themselves into the OS, or delay it until AVG can scan the device and delete it. Anyway, they said they wanted to try it, but I am having a very hard time setting it up. The network fails when I first turn on the machine, this includes Internet and networking with the three machines that are there. One machine is running 32 bit windows 7 while the other two are running 64 bit. I have to pull the Ethernet cord out of the 64 bit machines and put it in a different slot on the router to get it to connect, but the older 32 bit one works fine.
I am suspecting the router, when the troubleshoot feature works, it says "Invalid IP address" other times it doesn't work at all. Once the network is up and running, it works fine all day, until it needs to be restarted. Also, I run the computers without passwords when they start up, so when I tried to connect to the network as a "Work" Connection, I had no password to enter in the connect computers, so I switched to "Home" Network, and used the "Homegroup" feature to network them.
When the computers turn on, it takes forever to "Identify" the network type, and then it labels it as a Unknown Public Network, and there is no Internet or network connectivity. There is Adobe CS3 installed on all the machines, and I already took off the Bonjour service.
What is going wrong? It's making my parents very angry when they start up their computers. A newspaper needs this to be reliable, what have I screwed up? Is there a chance that the router is just too old to work? Is it something to do with having 64 bit and 32 bit computers on the same router?
The specs on the computers are:
Back-Desk:
Dell Optiplex GX260
Single 2GHz processor
1.5GB RAM
32 bit windows 7
Main Storage Computer:
Dell Inspiron 530S
Dual 1.8GHz processor
2GB RAM
64 bit Windows 7
Main Working Computer:
Dell Inspiron 530S
Dual 2.5GHz processor
3GB RAM
64 bit windows 7
The Router
NETGEAR Model FVS318
Hope Someone Knows what has gone wrong or what needs to happen.
Thanks in advance!