Crazy network problem, need help ASAP

[CameronD]

Hey guys,

Recently my internet stopped working on my desktop. I can't connect to LAN or wireless, it gets stuck on "Identifying...". On Local area connection properties, if I set a static IP it kinda connects to the router, but not really. It gets the network SSID but doesn't connect to the internet, and when I open the browser and try to access my D-link router via 192.168.0.1, nothing shows up.

I have a few ideas as to what it may be. I put my computer to sleep a few days ago and when it woke the internet was ok, but the next day after having shut the computer down overnight and then turned it on before work the next morning, the internet would not work. I reset the router and modem and realized there was a bigger problem at hand when it didn't work at all. All 3 of the other computers in my house are working via wireless.

When I set the static IP, like I said it doesn't get stuck on "Identifying..." but sometimes the network diagnostic utility will say it's the DNS server that isn't responding. Other times it doesn't detect anything at all.

Could be a DHCP problem too, of that I don't know much about, but I did try a few things mentioned in forums about the registry to no avail. Also, in Services, I get the errors "The dependency service or group failed to start" when I try to manually start the DHCP client or the DNS client.

If I remember from last night at one point I got an RPC error somewhere in the mix of everything, perhaps from a network diagnostic test or something. I looked into that too a little bit.

I should add that when I have a static IP and I do ipconfig /all I get this:

C:\Users\Cameron>ipconfig /all

Windows IP Configuration

Host Name . . . . . . . . . . . . : Cameron-PC
Primary Dns Suffix . . . . . . . :
Node Type . . . . . . . . . . . . : Hybrid
IP Routing Enabled. . . . . . . . : No
WINS Proxy Enabled. . . . . . . . : No

Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection:

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : NVIDIA nForce 10/100/1000 Mbps Ethernet
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : E0-CB-4E-56-35-F9
DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : No
Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes
IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.13(Preferred)
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.1
DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : 102.168.0.1
NetBIOS over Tcpip. . . . . . . . : Disabled

Tunnel adapter Teredo Tunneling Pseudo-Interface:

Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected
Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Teredo Tunneling Pseudo-Interface
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-00-00-00-00-00-00-E0
DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : No
Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes

C:\Users\Cameron>

Here is a list of a few things I've already tried/tested:
-Ethernet cable
-Bought a new NIC card (get the same problem)
-Bought a D-Link USB wireless adapter (get the same problem)
-Checked BIOS settings
-Changed NIC card settings to disable device sleep on disconnect
-Tried to flush the DNS and renew IP etc...
-Made sure the computer wouldn't allow the device to turn off to save power
-Connected the ethernet cable to a different laptop and tested the router. The router is fine.
-Uninstalled the integrated NIC, reinstalled it with old drivers, and then did it again with newer drivers.
-Checked hidden devices in device manager. There are yellow exclamation mark triangle things on Ancillary Function something or other for Winsock, HTTP, NETBT and NetIO legacy TDI support driver. In an early attempt to fix my problem I uninstalled the Ancillary for winsock thing and the HTTP thing, hoping they would get reinstalled with either a restart or when I reinstalled the integrated network adapter.

Please, sevenforums... any ideas?

 

[surfasb]

I think your DNS server setting is wrong. Usually, it will point to your gateway, which is 192.168.0.1, not 102.168.0.1

 

[acurasd]

That woudl not be a DNS server issue.. that is only used to resolve web pages... things like that..

he said that he is having issues connecting to his router.

I have had the same issues that he is having when my router went haywire...

It was the Linksys WRT160N v2
That had faulty firmware and I couldn't get that router to work if my life depending on it.

So may we get your routers Model.. we already know its Dlink by what you told us.
Version Number. Assuming that you can't get into the router.. I dont think you can tell us the firmware it is using.. can you at least tell us by knowledge that it is using the latest?


I would definitly turn off your NetBIOS.. I can tell that it is turned on becuase you have HYBRID in your ipconfig.
Completely turn off IPv6 until we can get IPv4 working. Then we can slowly turn on IPv4. We got to make sure your workgroup works before we can get the homegroup to work.

This is how I have my network setup... this is a very simple network...this is how it should be setup for a basic home user:

Index of /network

 

[chev65]

Op said this > Connected the ethernet cable to a different laptop and tested the router. The router is fine.

So the router works fine as it was tested with another laptop, but your desktop's eithernet stopped working,.. the one with the Nvidia driver correct?

Seems to me that is a driver problem and those Nvidia drivers have had their share of problems. There are new drivers out for your desktop, the latest being 15.53.

Try out the latest Nvidia driver for your desktop in the link below.
NVIDIA DRIVERS 15.53 WHQL

 

[acurasd]

Op said this > Connected the ethernet cable to a different laptop and tested the router. The router is fine.

So the router works fine as it was tested with another laptop, but your desktop's eithernet stopped working,.. the one with the Nvidia driver correct?

Seems to me that is a driver problem and those Nvidia drivers have had their share of problems. There are new drivers out for your desktop, the latest being 15.53.

Try out the latest Nvidia driver for your desktop in the link below.
NVIDIA DRIVERS 15.53 WHQL

My bad... 4 in the morning....

 

[CameronD]

Thanks for the quick responses!

So I did update the Nvidia drivers when I was troubleshooting, although for 64-bit windows 7 the lastest driver seems to be 15.51 WHQL, as opposed to the link you gave me for 15.53 WHQL 32-bit W7. I'm assuming I can't use the drivers for 32-bit.

My D-Link is model DIR-655. Like you said, I've tested the router from the other computers in my house and it works fine, but I'll try updating the firmware nonetheless.

In terms of the wrong DNS, that was just a mistake, it still doesn't fix anything.

IPv6 is turned off in the Local Area Connections settings, only IPv4 is on and configured.

I've disabled the NetBIOS, but I'm still having the same issue.

Thanks!

P.S. I should also note that when I turn on network discovery and file sharing, they automatically get set to "off" right away, it's weird. I can't get it to stay "on" no matter what.

 

[acurasd]

What we can do since I dont know your firmware... we should do a firmware update on your router using another computer.

I downloaded the lastest firmware update for you and stuck it in my server becuase trying to navigate through the d link website is a pain in the Arse....

so here it is: Index of /network/dlink

One thing that we can do with your computer is that I can use TEAMVIEW from TeamViewer - Free Remote Access and Remote Desktop Sharing over the Internet and i can look at your settings from there and we can work on it together. It would be alot easier than to go through 5 pages of thread and still get no where. I got nothing to do for a couple of hours... so if your interested.

Install the program and just let me know. I'll continue to check the thread for updates.

 

[chev65]

Thanks for the quick responses!

So I did update the Nvidia drivers when I was troubleshooting, although for 64-bit windows 7 the lastest driver seems to be 15.51 WHQL, as opposed to the link you gave me for 15.53 WHQL 32-bit W7. I'm assuming I can't use the drivers for 32-bit.

My D-Link is model DIR-655. Like you said, I've tested the router from the other computers in my house and it works fine, but I'll try updating the firmware nonetheless.

In terms of the wrong DNS, that was just a mistake, it still doesn't fix anything.

IPv6 is turned off in the Local Area Connections settings, only IPv4 is on and configured.

I've disabled the NetBIOS, but I'm still having the same issue.

Thanks!

P.S. I should also note that when I turn on network discovery and file sharing, they automatically get set to "off" right away, it's weird. I can't get it to stay "on" no matter what.

There is the problem right there, this condition is usually caused by an A/V software or a third party networking software like VMware or installing one of those power suites can also cause this. You will need to uninstall which ever of these you might have installed. Basically something you installed tweaked the registry because Windows 7 does not do this on it's own. This same problem has been around since the Vista days and from what I read is always caused by a third party program. There is no reason to disable IPv6 or netbios.

After you figure out which program is causing this you may need to perform the following tasks to fix the problem.

Try to uninstall/reinstall "client for microsoft networks" and "file and print sharing" protocols. You can do that under the properties for your network adapter.

Doing this may also help.
Fire up! services.msc from Run Command, look for the following 6 Services.
1. Network List Service< Set to Manual/Automatic
2. Network Local Awareness < Set to Automatic
3. Network Store Interface Service < Set to Automatic
4. SSDP Discovery < Set to Automatic
5. UPnP Device Host < Set to Automatic
6. Function Discovery Resource Publication < Set to Automatic

 

[CameronD]

Ok, so I had already updated my router firmware to that exact update last night, thanks acurasd. Chev, I think I should tell you that I downloaded a program called Bandwidth Monitor, of course to monitor my bandwidth so I wouldn't go over 60GB. A few days after it acted a little weird, telling me I downloaded 60GB worth of stuff in one day. One or two days later I got this network problem. I uninstalled Bandwidth Monitor immediately and forgot to mention it in this thread. I thought perhaps it was a infected, so I did a virus scan and didn't find anything. Perhaps it's not a virus and it's just a conflict, like you said. So I'll try following those steps you gave me and see if I can get it to work! Thanks a lot.

 

[CameronD]

Alright, I've done all of those things but when I try to reinstall the client for microsoft networks "Could not add the requested feature. The error is: The dependency service or group failed to start." I was, however, able to reinstall the File and Printer Sharing.

Ideas?

 

[chev65]

I believe that following the tutorial in the link below may resolve this problem. Be sure and enable IPv6 and netbios because they aren't the cause of this problem. I would also use DHCP unless you have a very specific reason for using static IP's.

Windows 7 Unidentified Network, Limited Access, No Internet Connection Problem Resolved

If that doesn't fix it it might also help to do this.
Open the command prompt by typing cmd into start/search
Type > ipconfig /release
Then hit Enter
–wait for your nic to restart then type
ipconfig /renew
Enter

 

[CameronD]

I've turned IPv6 back on as well as NetBIOS. The static IP was just set up because it seems to help the problem out a little bit when set. Otherwise the network just doesn't even connect to the router. I get an "autoconfiguration IPv4 Address" of 169.254.40.0 which isn't what I should be getting from ipconfig.

Ok, so I followed the tutorial and it didn't fix my problem. Then I tried to do an ipconfig /release, which I have tried in the past, although not after doing all this stuff we've tried, and still I get the message "An error occured while releasing interface Local Area Connection: The RPC server is unavailable." I looked into it a bit the first time I saw that message a few days ago and I didn't figure it out. Maybe you guys can! This is a pretty big problem I've got here I guess. So frustrating

 

[surfasb]

I really doesn't sound like an DHCP/IP problem anymore. A static IP address should ram things home for you otherwise.

 

[chev65]

If the RPC remote procedure call server is unavailable it may not be started or working correctly. That combined with the other error of network discovery magically turning itself off also indicates a registry problem. Most likely a few registry settings have been changed or messed up to cause these sorts of problems...this doesn't happen by itself.

It might be worth while to get it started again in services.msc, if the registry is too messed up this won't work.

Click on Start / Run and enter:
Services.msc
In the right list, find "Remote Procedure Call (RPC)"
Clicking the right mouse button and choose "Properties"
Go to the tab "Recovery", and then sequentially in First Failure, Second Failure, etc. and select "Restart Service"
Validate the change OK
Restart system and test for connection.

If you ever ran a program like CCleaner then you should have a back up of your registry sitting in your documents files somewhere. If it's there I highly recommend that you run the back up.

 

[CameronD]

Well, I'll try the RPC thing in the morning, and if that doesn't work I'll have to reinstall Windows!

I don't have a registry back-up.

I'll let you know how it goes.

Thanks.

 

[chev65]

Well, I'll try the RPC thing in the morning, and if that doesn't work I'll have to reinstall Windows!

I don't have a registry back-up.

I'll let you know how it goes.

Thanks.

That would be the easy way at this point because everything I have read about these problems indicate that the registry is messed up which is not easy to fix.

 

[CameronD]

So yeah, I'm glad we narrowed it down to a registry problem. I'll be more careful installing networking stuff next time!

I had to reformat my computer and my internet is working fine now.

Thanks for all your help guys!

Take care.