The everyday blog of Richard Bartle.
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11:40am on Monday, 14th May, 2007:
Rant
After removing every virus known to science from my younger daughter's PC, all seemed well. It seemed well until she tried to use the Internet the next day: it didn't connect.
I've no idea why.
All the (Windows XP) PCs in our house are connected to an ethernet hub, which has an uplink to a router, which is attached to an ADSL line. My elder daughter's PC has the exact same set-up as my younger daughter's as far as I can tell, but whereas hers works, the other doesn't. It won't even get a subnet address dynamically, I have to set it statically if I want it to use the LAN. When I do set it statically, the LAN does work as a LAN — I can do things like print things remotely from the renegade PC — but it resolutely refuses to go anywhere near the DNS server (ie. the router). I can ping the router, and I can even ping beyond the router if I give a raw IP address, but I can't open a browser window on the router or on an explicit IP address beyond it.
I've tried activating and deactivating network cards, shutting down and rebooting the router/hub/PC in various different orders, switching TCP/IP from using DHCP to having a static address and an explicitly-identified DNS server (which I know works in principle because that's the setup on my own PC). I even deleted the anti-virus software, as it came with a firewall that could have been misbehaving or something.
It's still not working, though. It's as if the hub wants to conceal from that one PC the fact that there's a router on the network.
I suppose it's possible that there's still some virus around, but I doubt it. More likely, one corrupted some essential service and the anti-virus software, while able to isolate it, wasn't able to repair it.
I've spent 2 hours on Saturday, 2 hours on Sunday and 2 hours today trying to fix it so far...
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Copyright © 2007 Richard Bartle (richard@mud.co.uk).