(Newbie:) ADSL OK; XP laptop OK; Win98SE sees LAN, but not Internet

One final (I hope!) newbie question:

Today, I started trying to set up my new LAN and ADSL connection,
using a Netgear router*. Mostly, it's going OK. To my surprise,
my daughter's WinXP laptop is fully visible on the LAN, for the
first time (unlike the times I tried to connect it to my Win98SE
desktop using a crossover cable). Both my Win98SE machines also
continue to be visible on the LAN (just as they were when I was
using the crossover cable). Almost miraculously (I was expecting
it all to go horribly wrong!), the ADSL connection seems OK: the
router says, "DownStream Connection Speed 2272 kbps, UpStream
Connection Speed 288 kbps", which looks vaguely sensible. It was
also able to autodetect the right "VPI, VCI, PPPoA" stuff (none
of which makes any sense to me, but I knew what values to expect).

Even more marvellously, the laptop was able to access the Internet
as soon as I switched it on, even though I'd only taken a guess at
how to set up "Network Properties", or whatever it is (and I had
even specified DNS server addresses different from the ones that
the router says it is using!). And all this is in spite of the
fact that I am using a long ADSL modem cable (albeit an expensive
one, by Belkin), which I ran along the floor right beside a long
Ethernet cable to the laptop, both kinked and squashed between a
door and its frame! Another sin, apparently, is that I have two
telephones both connected via a splitter to a single microfilter:
a Pluscom SAMF-2000, which I got cheap from eBay. I've been doing
the whole thing on the cheap. The total cost of the equipment,
including four good Belkin Cat5e cables and a right-angled phone
splitter (socket doubler), was a little over £33, including P&P.

The only problem is, my main Win98SE machine still can't see the
Internet, unless I dial up in the old-fashioned way. With the XP
laptop, I didn't have to do anything to tell it not to use its
dial-up modem any more, and the dial-up connections still exist,
and can presumably still be used (although I haven't checked).

Is Win98SE different in this respect? Or is there some other
dumbly obvious thing I haven't done, or might have done wrong?

As already implied, I have no trouble accessing the router at
IP address 192.168.0.1 over the Ethernet cable attached to my
main Win98SE machine - from which I am posting this message,
using a dial-up connection.

I have set IP addresses manually: including 192.168.0.2 (this
machine), 192.168.0.5 (the other Win98SE desktop), 192.168.0.4
(the WinXP laptop). I've always done this, and don't want to
change it, especially as the laptop is having no problems; but
there was some conflicting advice last time about DHCP, and I
may well have messed things up, by trying to configure things
manually without actually understanding what I'm doing, so I'll
listen if I'm told there's a better way to do this!

*As I mentioned in my last post in the thread "Need to adapt old
system (and brain) to broadband" (on Thu 15 Nov) the router is an
Ethernet modem/router, DG834 v2: it's secondhand, but seems to be
working perfectly.

 

Did you also set the default gateway?

 

Just testing, to try to work out why on Earth I haven't been able
to post a followup in this thread! Sorry about the incompetence.

 

Something downright crazy is happening here (nothing to do with
the network/broadband problem I was posting about in the first
place).

Let's see if I can at least post /something/ as a followup in
this thread, even if for some bizarre reason I can't post the
actual message I wanted to!

I'm not really the complete idiot that I must now seem to be ...

 

[Just testing to see if /this/ is the part of the message that
won't post! Sorry about all the nonsense.]

 

Have you tried temporarily changing the Win98 PC to use DHCP so it gets all
the correct details from the router? If this works and the static setting
doesn't, then that might help diagnose the problem.

I realise that you've probably got very good reasons for wanting to give the
PCs static addresses, either by configuring a static IP at each PC or else
by using DHCP but reserving a fixed address for each PC (identified by MAC)
at the router if the router has this capability. I'd tend to go for the
latter because it allows PCs to be connected to other networks if that's
ever required, without the need to reconfigure TCP.


With the current setup, what happens if you do the folloeing at the Win98
PC:

- Start | Run | command
- in the black window with white writing, type "ping news.bbc.co.uk"

You should get "Reply from 212.58.226.29" but you might get "could not find
host". Also try "ping 212.58.226.29".

 

On Wed, 12 Dec 2007 11:33:24 -0000, "Mortimer"

I'm going stark, staring mad.

I just composed a long reply, explaining in detail all the
weird things that had been happening, and explaining that the
original problem with IP addresses was no longer a problem.

But that message would not post, either! So I'll try this
short one instead.

If and when this Twilight Zone madness gets sorted out, I'll
explain about the IP thing, and carry on asking questions.

 

Weird. Do you get any error message when you try to post your longer
messages? I see from the headers you're using Forte Agent to post to
newsgroups - I'm not familar with that program but I'd have thought that the
posting would remain in the outbox until posted and that you'd get some sort
of error message if it did fail to send.

Good luck!

 

"Connection closed unexpectedly by server."

Yes, as above - over, and over, and over again! #-O