Solved Some apps unable to access the Internet

[dma5m561]

Hello all, from a newly-joined member of the Forum. I hope someone can help me resolve a problem that's driving me slightly beserk!

A few weeks ago I did a completely fresh installation of a (fully licensed) version of 32-bit Win7 Pro on a Dell OptiPlex 780 platform, to replace the version of Vista that was originally installed on the machine. The machine has a 1Gbps wired connection to my ADSL router, a Billion 7800N - my ISP is Demon (now part of Vodafone).

The Win7 installation on the OptiPlex 780 proceeded pretty smoothly and after installing the Dell system-specific video, network and sound drivers I soon had the system up and running as I wanted it, and all seemed well, so I proceeded to install various apps including my preferred firewall (Comodo) and anti-virus (Avast!), followed by Firefox which I much prefer to IE.

During the course of installing various other apps I wanted to install Adobe Reader and Flash Player so I downloaded the installer 'stubs' and set the online installers running, but subsequently nothing at all happened - no further download activity, no error messages, nothing whatsoever even after leaving the system to its own devices for a few tens of minutes, and at no time did the Comodo firewall generate any alerts to indicate that a program was trying to get through the firewall and access the Internet. In the end I had to resort to downloading (using Firefox) and running the offline installers for the Adobe apps.

In the last couple of days I've found that when I instruct the Macrium Reflect backup and imaging software I've installed on the OptiPlex 780 to check the Macrium website for updates, the program just hangs without any indication of errors, and eventually I have to kill the app. Again, the Comodo firewall doesn't raise any alerts about the app trying to access the Internet.

I've also just tried to launch IE 11 and found that it just sits there, with the activity indicator spinning and displaying a status message that says "Waiting for a response from <website>..."

I'm able to use Firefox (32.0.1) on the OptiPlex 780 to browse the Internet without any problems whatsoever, and telnet from the 780 works entirely correctly not only to other machines on my 192.168.x.x LAN but also to addresses on the Internet, so the basic network connectivity is there and working, but for some reason IE 11 and the various other apps don't seem to be able to communicate with the Internet.

I've now uninstalled the Comodo firewall and Avast! anti-virus from the OptiPlex 780 and have reverted to using the Win7 firewall and MSE, to no effect - IE 11 and the Macrium Reflect updater still don't seem to be able to access the Internet.

I've tried using various netshell reset commands (int ip and winsock), as suggested on this forum for similar problems, but again these have made no difference.

IE 11 on another Win7 machine - a Dell Vostro laptop with a wireless connection to my router - works absolutely fine so there's nothing configured on the router that might be blocking the accesses from some of the apps on the 780 machine to the Internet.

Although I rarely need to use IE 11, it's a real bind not having it and various other apps, especially the Adobe installers/updaters and the Macrium Reflect updater, able to access the Internet but I'm at a complete loss to know what to try next to overcome the problem! It seems to me that something somewhere is blocking these apps' accesses to the Internet but I don't know where to look - temporarily disabling the Win7 firewall doesn't make any difference so it's not that that's doing the blocking!

Has anyone else experienced a similar problem and found a solution??!! I really don't want to have to reinstall the entire O/S and all the apps just to overcome the problem.

Thanks in advance

--
Martin

 

[Golden]

Martin - I've asked Rayda to have a look at this for you.

In the meantime, please gather some information as described here:
http://www.sevenforums.com/network-...sting-your-networking-thread.html#post2490995

 

[dma5m561]

Hello, thanks for the prompt reply to my posting and also thanks for passing it on to Rayda.

I thought I'd already covered most of the 'basic requirements' in my original posting, but here in addition is the output obtained when I ran 'ipconfig /all':

Microsoft Windows [Version 6.1.7601]
Copyright (c) 2009 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

C:\Users\Martin G0HDB>ipconfig /all

Windows IP Configuration

Host Name . . . . . . . . . . . . : G0HDB-DELL780
Primary Dns Suffix . . . . . . . :
Node Type . . . . . . . . . . . . : Hybrid
IP Routing Enabled. . . . . . . . : No
WINS Proxy Enabled. . . . . . . . : No
DNS Suffix Search List. . . . . . : G0HDB_home

Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection:

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : G0HDB_home
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Intel(R) 82567LM-3 Gigabit Network Connection
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-25-64-B7-35-15
DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes
Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes
IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.42(Preferred)
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
Lease Obtained. . . . . . . . . . : Sun 14 September 2014 16:36:45
Lease Expires . . . . . . . . . . : Tue 16 September 2014 04:36:45
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.254
DHCP Server . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.254
DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.254
NetBIOS over Tcpip. . . . . . . . : Enabled

Tunnel adapter isatap.G0HDB_home:

Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected
Connection-specific DNS Suffix . : G0HDB_home
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Microsoft ISATAP Adapter
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-00-00-00-00-00-00-E0
DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : No
Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes

Tunnel adapter Teredo Tunneling Pseudo-Interface:

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
IPv6 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 2001:0:5ef5:79fb:a6:237b:3f57:fed5(Preferred)
Link-local IPv6 Address . . . . . : fe80::a6:237b:3f57:fed5%13(Preferred)
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : ::
NetBIOS over Tcpip. . . . . . . . : Disabled

C:\Users\Martin G0HDB>

I forgot to mention in my original posting that the DHCP server on my Billion 7800N router is configured to use 'fixed-host' MAC binding so that all the clients, both wired and wireless, on the 192.168.x.x network get pre-defined 'static' IP addresses assigned to them.

I also forgot to mention that I've run full MSE and Malwarebytes scans on the machine and that they didn't reveal any 'nasties'.

I hope this additional information will prove helpful, and thanks again for taking an interest in my problem!

--
Martin

 

[2xg]

Hi there Martin,

Got a message from Golden to assist you and thanks for providing us additional info.

Have you checked the IE 11 proxy setting, make sure that it's not using any proxy at all? You may reset it by following this guide.
We can try changing the DNS to Public by using the Google DNS servers if you have not done this yet.

DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.254

IE 11 can be buggy sometimes, although those sites that you're trying to access works in another computer. At work, we use different versions of IE, also Chrome and FF as other sites won't work using one particular browser.

If assigning Public DNS didn't cure your issue, you may downgrade the IE 11 to the previous versions if you wish. One thing you'll have to be aware of..... set your Windows Updates on not to automatically download but.... you may choose what you wanted to download then install.

Hope this helps and we'll appreciate another update.

Ray

 

[dma5m561]

Hello Ray, many thanks for your input - here's an update on what I've just tried.

Firstly, something else I forgot to mention in the earlier posts was that I had tried flushing the DNS cache (ipconfig /flushdns), with no effect.

I've just tried setting the IPv4 properties to use my ISP's DNS servers (158.152.1.58 preferred and 158.152.1.43 alternate), again with no effect - neither IE 11 nor the Macrium Reflect updater work - so I've gone back to getting the DNS server address automatically, ie. from the router.

I've done a full reset on IE 11 and there are definitely no proxies configured, and it still sits waiting for a response from the URL it's trying to connect to, so that's not the source of the problem.

It seems to me that the problem I've got isn't at the network link layer but it's more at the session layer or higher - there's something somewhere that's preventing certain apps, not only IE 11 and the Macrium Reflect updater but also the Adobe online installers, from being able to connect to and communicate correctly with the distant hosts even though other apps, including Firefox and the puTTY telnet client, exactly just as they should. However, I have no idea where to start looking for where such session-layer problems might reside or how to overcome them!

Keep the suggestions coming!

--
Martin

 

[2xg]

I would still give a try using Google's DNS servers and not your ISPs, it won't hurt.

I've just tried setting the IPv4 properties to use my ISP's DNS servers (158.152.1.58 preferred and 158.152.1.43 alternate)

Also, will you also consider to downgrade to IE10?

 

[dma5m561]

Hello again Ray, I've just tried using the Google DNS servers (8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4) and it made no difference whatsoever - neither IE 11 nor the Macrium Reflect updater seem to be able to connect to the Internet.

I would happily use IE 10, but as I said in my original post I only very infrequently need to use IE at all so the version isn't a major issue - in fact I would probably prefer an even older version!

What matters much more to me is the inability of installers and updaters such as the ones for the Adobe Reader and Flash Player apps and Macrium Reflect to connect to the appropriate distant hosts - that will be a significant issue, especially with regard to ensuring that updates can be downloaded and installed as and when they're released.

I've just run the CCleaner app and done a registry scan; it didn't find anything that needed cleaning up. Interestingly, when I told the app to check for updates it did so immediately and reported back that I already have the latest version, so whatever's blocking the accesses from IE 11 and Macrium Reflect to the Internet doesn't seem to have afflicted the CCleaner app.

--
Martin

 

[2xg]

Thanks for giving that a try Martin.

Do you have the latest Windows Updates? or, can you try doing manual WU?

Have you also tried uninstalling IE 11 then reinstall it?

Another experiment - See if it makes any difference if you're booted on Safe Made with Networking (restart your computer, continue tapping F8 then select this option).

 

[Tookeri]

Don't know if Comodo has a specific uninstall tool. Normal uninstalls does not always work. I've seen strange problems because of this. Check your network properties for a firewall driver:

And you could enable logging for Windows Firewall, then start the programs that have connection problems and check out the logs.
Enable or Disable the Windows Firewall Log

 

[dma5m561]

Hello again Ray, and hello for the first time Tookeri. Thanks to you both for your ongoing interest in my problems. Herewith an update on what I've tried recently, but firstly to answer Ray's questions:

1. Yes, my installation of Win7 Pro is fully up to date.

2. Yes, I've tried uninstalling IE 11, through Add/remove Windows components, and then re-installing it - this had no effect in that a fresh install of IE 11 behaved in the same way as an earlier one.

3. Yes, I've tried Safe mode with networking again to no effect - IE 11 and the updater(s) still didn't connect to the Internet.

Tookeri's reference to the Comodo uninstaller has reminded me that I did have issues uninstalling the firewall a couple of days ago - I think I used the Revo Uninstaller app to try to get rid of the Comodo installation. If I recall correctly, Revo firstly initiated Comodo's own uninstaller which ran but then seemed to hang without completing successfully so eventually I had to revert to killing off the apps and processes using Task Manager.

Also, I did find a Comodo firewall driver in the network properties - it presumably got left there when the uninstall failed to complete fully - so I got rid of that.

I have enabled Windows firewall logging as suggested by Tookeri but for some reason the system won't let me open the logfile even though I'm logged in with administrator privileges - I haven't pursued that fully yet.

This morning I've tried (several times!) re-installing several versions of the Comodo firewall, including one that's several months old and much 'lighter in weight', in the hope that a fresh installation perhaps followed by a successful uninstall would sort out the problems but unfortunately none of the attempted installations has gone through to completion - the files seem to get unpacked and written but eventually the installer hangs at a message about activating the installation - I guess it's trying to call home to Comodo and not getting through. Then, when I try to cancel the installation it juts sits there again doing nothing and after many minutes I have to kill it off using Task Manager - most frustrating and annoying!!!

I've also found that although neither Revo Uninstaller nor the Windows Programs and Features tool show Comodo as being installed, the uninstaller in CCleaner does include it in the list of installed apps. However, when I try to uninstall it via CCleaner it fails.

Even though a CCleaner scan of the registry doesn't report any issues I've fired up 'regedit' and done a search for references to Comodo - there's quite a few left in there so I might try just deleting each and every reference in the registry to Comodo to see if that makes any difference.

I might also try installing a different firewall - several years ago I used the free version of ZoneAlarm and was generally happy with it but changed to Comodo because it was reviewed as being 'better' so I might see if ZA will install correctly and cure the problems.

If my registry cleaning and/or the installation of ZA don't help then it looks like I'm going to have to completely zap the existing Win7 installation and start again from scratch, which will be a bind and quite time-consuming but quite cathartic in a way! If I have to resort to that, then as soon as I've got a clean installation of Win7 Pro with all the Dell-specific drivers plus a few essential apps installed (but not the Comodo firewall!) I'll take an image of it so that I can easily and quickly get back to that point in the event of future hassles.

It's worth remembering that I've had the problem of IE 11 and the various installers/updaters apparently not connecting to the Internet both with and without the Comodo firewall installed, so the problem has existed for much of the time since I did the completely-clean Win7 installation in early August - the Comodo firewall was one of the first apps I installed after the O/S and although, as far as I can recall, it seemed to install correctly I'm beginning to wonder if something odd did happen at that time that resulted in, for example, the Adobe online installers not working when I first tried to use them.

Watch this space...

--
Martin

 

[Tookeri]

Hi Martin,

Read your posts again and you said that when this problem started you noticed that Comodo didn't give you any alerts. And Comodo was one of the first apps you installed. That might indicate a corrupt and non fully functional installation of Comodo. And obviously the uninstall wasn't successful either. I think left overs by Comodo is most likely the problem here. You could check with Autoruns if you find any Comodo stuff left.

I know you have tried with Windows Firewall disabled, but I had already written this when I saw that so I'll keep this info as it might be good to know:
A default Windows Firewall configuration doesn't block any outbound connections. It allows ALL. Only if you have changed the configuration for outbound connections from "Allow (default)" to "Block" would I suspect Windows Firewall in this case.

To view the log you go to Control Panel, Windows Firewall, Advanced settings, click on Monitoring in the left pane, then click on the log link under Logging Settings.

There's a way to get better logs than that described above. Run this in an elevated command prompt:
auditpol.exe /set /subcategory:{0CCE9226-69AE-11D9-BED3-505054503030}[FONT=&quot] /failure:enable /success:disable[/FONT]

The GUID is for Filtering Platform Connection, source: 2.2.1.2 Subcategory and SubcategoryGUID
Then use Event Viewer \ Windows Logs \ Security to view details of all blocked connections. It'll show what program was blocked too.

I would focus on making sure Comodo is fully removed. I found this but I can't say I recommend it because I don't know the full effects of what this cleaning method actually does:
How to Remove Comodo Firewall | eHow

PS. If you combine Windows Firewall with a program called Windows Firewall Control (WFC) you get alerts for outbound connections (for registered users). WFC is an excellent GUI so you'll never have to go into advanced settings in Windows Firewall again. See link in my signature below.

 

[2xg]

@Martin - I've had serious issues using CCleaner in the past, although others reported it as a useful program, I stopped using it as I don't want to take any chances to use it on any computers at work based on my own experience. Have you done a sfc /scannow and disk check?

 

[dma5m561]

Hello again Ray and Tookeri, thanks for the further information and advice.

Ray - I've used CCleaner for quite a few years on a variety of machines running O/S's from (I think!) Win98SE onwards and never had any problems with it; I realise it's not a universal panacea but I find it a useful tool for cleaning out browser caches and cookies, and doing what are admittedly probably fairly superficial registry scans and cleansing. I work on the principal that a little bit of preventative maintenance regularly should help to minimise the need to do major surgery later.

I did an sfc /verifyonly a couple of days ago and it came up clean so I haven't yet bothered doing a /scannow, I might give that a go shortly. I'll also run a disk scan just to check that it's OK.

Tookeri - many thanks for the various suggestions; I haven't yet got round to trying everything you've suggested but will give them a go. I did follow your guidance about where to find the firewall logfile and managed to open it successfully - I'd previously tried to open it by locating it with Windows Explorer and then using Notepad to open it, which didn't work.

Thanks for the link to how to remove the Comodo firewall - I went to that and then found some more links to various Comodo forum postings; one of these included a link to a removal tool that was written for earlier versions of the firewall but I ran it anyway on the basis that even if something got screwed up I was probably going to have to rebuild the system anyway! The tool seemed to get rid of a load of files and registry entries, and I've subsequently gone through the registry with 'regedit' and deleted pretty much every reference and key to Comodo, so the registry is now (almost) a Comodo-free zone, although there are some entries I can't get rid of because their associated files no longer exist.

I've also deleted all the Comodo files and folders from C:\Program Files and also from the user files area (C:\Users\<username>\AppData\. Fortunately nothing I've deleted from the registry or elsewhere seems to have had any adverse effect on anything else - that's always a worry when manually making changes to the registry and filesystems!

After doing the registry and filesystem cleaning, Comodo no longer appears in the list of installed apps shown by the CCleaner uninstaller tool, so that's one minor success. Also, Task Manager shows that there are no Comodo-related processes or services running.

Despite having pretty much purged the Comodo firewall from the machine, IE 11 and the Macrium Reflect updater still don't seem to be able to access the Internet - their behaviour is exactly as before - but interestingly the Adobe Acrobat Update Service (Task Manager shows the process as 'armsvc.exe') worked this morning - a notification that an update was available appeared in the system tray and the update downloaded and installed successfully.

--
Martin

 

[Tookeri]

Hi Martin,

Ok, I guess we have to assume then that Comodo shouldn't be the problem anymore. I see you have tried Safe Mode, full IE reset, re-install of IE, verifying proxy settings, running SFC etc.
The fact that Safe Mode didn't work suggests a problem with Windows. Have you tried creating a new user account and see if that helps? I'm running out of other ideas..... well maybe checking the add-ons in IE and try and disabling them

 

[dma5m561]

Hi again Tookeri, thanks for the ongoing support. Here's the latest on what I've done today:

1. I ran 'sfc /scannow' and it came back with no errors at all, so the system files would all appear to be intact.

2. I tried again to update the Macrium Reflect backup/imaging app using its 'Check for updates' menu option and, just as before, it failed so I decided to uninstall the app and then re-install it to see if that would make the updater work. The uninstall worked successfully but when I started the same installer 'stub' that I'd originally used soon after I built the PC with Win7 Pro, nothing happened - I can't remember exactly what the message was but it was something along the lines of downloading the full installer.

3. Immediately after starting the Macrium installer, at approx 1148z today, I looked in the Win7 firewall log and here's the relevant extract:

2014-09-17 11:48:50 ALLOW UDP 192.168.1.42 192.168.1.255 138 138 0 - - - - - - - SEND
2014-09-17 11:49:04 ALLOW UDP 192.168.1.42 192.168.1.255 137 137 0 - - - - - - - SEND
2014-09-17 11:49:04 ALLOW UDP 192.168.1.42 255.255.255.255 68 67 0 - - - - - - - SEND
2014-09-17 11:49:04 ALLOW UDP 192.168.1.42 192.168.1.254 57016 53 0 - - - - - - - SEND
2014-09-17 11:49:05 ALLOW TCP 192.168.1.42 82.165.36.138 1038 80 0 - 0 0 0 - - - SEND
2014-09-17 11:50:47 ALLOW UDP 192.168.1.42 193.47.164.28 123 123 0 - - - - - - - SEND
2014-09-17 11:50:53 ALLOW UDP 192.168.1.42 192.168.1.255 138 138 0 - - - - - - - SEND
2014-09-17 11:51:55 ALLOW UDP 192.168.1.42 193.47.164.28 123 123 0 - - - - - - - SEND

As you'll see, an outgoing TCP packet was sent from port 1038 on the Win7 PC's address (192.168.1.42) to (I think) port 80 on 82.165.36.138 but the firewall didn't log anything coming back in from that address, which resolves as a Macrium host (mail.macrium.com).

The address of 193.47.164.28 to which some outgoing UDP frames were sent, on port 123, resolves as an NTP server so this will be my NTP client doing its stuff.

The extract of the firewall log also shows some DNS and NETBIOS activity, ie. the UDP packets on ports 53, 137 and 138, which would seem to be routine stuff.

3. The puzzle is why nothing was returned from the Macrium server's address; in order to eliminate one possibility I've reassigned the PC a different static IP address, this is the one that I'd previously used for the WinXP machine that the Win7 machine has replaced. The Win7 machine's address is now 192.168.1.27 - unsurprisingly this hasn't made any difference.

4. I've looked at all the config options for my Billion 7800N router and can't see anything at all in there that might be affecting any inbound packets in response to the outgoing connection to the Macrium host, but I'll have another look to confirm this. If there was some filtering or whatever configured in the router then I would have expected it to affect the ability of Firefox, my NTP client and the puTTY telnet client I use for accessing another machine on my LAN and occasionally a remote host.

Unfortunately, having uninstalled the Macrium Reflect backup/imaging app and having been unable to re-install it because of the networking issues, the machine will no longer be able to do its scheduled regular backups to my NAS

I'll try creating a test user to see if this has any effect, I'll let you know what happens!

--
Martin

 

[Tookeri]

I have Macrium too so I did the same update check and it logged the same IP for TCP, and similar but not identical ports for UDP, maybe because I have NetBIOS disabled. Anyway, the update check worked and it found a new version. So there's nothing wrong with the Macrium servers.
The only other different thing in my log was that my anti-virus did a cloud reputation check for the Macrium IP before allowing it. But I couldn't see any such log entries from your log. I mean if your anti-virus would wrongly not allow that IP?!

An outbound connection won't log anything on the way back so to speak, so that's normal because it's an active connection just waiting for a response. Inbound connections are different.

I found this known search term. Maybe it holds some suggestions you haven't tried?
internet explorer cannot access internet but firefox can
https://www.google.com/#q=internet+explorer+cannot+access+internet+but+firefox+can

 

[dma5m561]

Hi Tookeri, interesting that you also use Macrium and found that its update check used the same address as mine did (before I uninstalled the app!) and that it worked successfully. I've just fired up Macrium on another PC (the one on which I'm doing all this stuff), which is still running WinXP but is due to be replaced by a Win7 machine as soon as I get the troublesome one sorted out! As soon as Macrium started on the WinXP machine it announced that it had found an update which I've successfully downloaded and installed, so there doesn't appear to be anything in my router config that's blocking access to the Macrium host.

Re: the AV on the Win7 machine doing a cloud reputation check for the Macrium IP, I've currently got Microsoft Security Essentials installed - I took Avast! off the system a few days ago - and I have no idea whether or not MSE would do a reputation check.

Earlier this afternoon I created a separate user account called 'test' on the Win7 machine and tried running IE 11 and the Macrium updater from that account (before I uninstalled Macrium) - the effect was exactly the same as from the existing user account, ie. nothing happened. IE 11 still sat there waiting for a response and the updater just hung until I used Task Manager to kill the process.

I've just tried uninstalling the Meinberg NTP client that I use to ensure that the Win7 machine is accurately time-synced - I need this for a couple of the specialist apps I run on the PC - and the behaviour without the NTP client running was exactly as before, ie. IE 11 and the Macrium downloader/installer didn't work.

I've just installed the latest network drivers for the Intel chipset on the mobo in the Dell OptiPlex 780 - I thought I'd already done that when I first installed Win7 and then installed all the Dell system-specific drivers on the machine several weeks ago but perhaps I missed that one - but it hasn't made any difference.

I looked at the Google link you sent but there didn't seem to be anything there that I hadn't already tried, although I did do a 'netsh winsock reset catalog' just in case it would help, but it didn't.

So, I've pretty much run out of things to try so I reckon the time is rapidly approaching for a fresh, clean install of Win7 to see if that will cure the problem. If it doesn't then I'm going to be really, really stumped!!

--
Martin

 

[Tookeri]

Ok, you have tried a lot! I don't think I have any other suggestions either unfortunately. A clean install will solve this, I could almost bet money on it I still think the failed Comodo uninstall could be the reason, especially since you found that the firewall driver hadn't been removed. Maybe something else that's hard to find still remains. Maybe we'll never know......

Don't know about MSE and reputation checks.

Well, good luck and all the best Martin!

 

[dma5m561]

Well, it never rains but it pours!!

Earlier today I decided to bite the bullet and prepare the Win7 PC for an O/S re-install but before starting the process I thought I'd reboot my ADSL router, a Billion 7800N, just to be sure that it wasn't doing something to block the access from some of the PC's installed apps (IE 11, Macrium updater) to the Internet.

I switched off the router, waited a few secs and then switched it on again and waited, and waited, and waited, for the ADSL light to come on, which it didn't. Looking at the router's status it was showing that the ADSL link was down and didn't show any signs of trying to obtain ADSL sync - no handshaking or anything at all.

Anyway, no matter what I tried the Billion router wouldn't achieve ADSL sync so I've now installed a spare router - a Draytek 2710N - and I now have Internet access again.

It looks like the Billion router, which had been switched on continuously and has worked rock-solidly since it was first installed about 9mths ago, didn't like being power-cycled so it'll have to go back to the manufacturer for replacement - I guess it'll be fun trying to organise that...

The re-install of Win7 on the troublesome PC has been postponed for a short time... :sarc:

--
Martin

 

[2xg]

Hi Martin,

Thanks for the update. Just to confirm, is your issue resolved according from your statement here?

Anyway, no matter what I tried the Billion router wouldn't achieve ADSL sync so I've now installed a spare router - a Draytek 2710N - and I now have Internet access again.