I'm having some problems connecting an adsl modem to a 4 port router (both dlink boxes).

I take the dlink router ( D-Link DI-704UP ) back to office to test with my ADSL system.

Before I get a chance to properly test the router, my ADSL modem/router ( netcomm nb1300 plus 4 ) fails after 13 months (it had a 12 month warranty... grrr). So I quickly buy a single eth port router ( billion bipac 5102s ) & I connect it to my existing router (tp-link tl-wr642g, 4 eth ports, 1 wan port & a wireless AP).

I then notice that my original setup (the connection to the wireless router) doesn't look right. It works, but the wireless router has 4 eth ports & a wan port & I didn't connect the wan port to the original modem. The modem was connected to the second router via one of the standard ethernet ports on both boxes.

I decide to look into this further, as I might encounter many similar situations.

With next to no information available on the internet (or in the manuals) on how to connect an adsl modem & a router... I experiment a bit & I find 2 different ways to connect them:

How it should work: modem is set to bridge mode & then connected to the wan port of the router... The modem should now ignore its ISP details (I'm assuming a PPPoe internet connection, which requires a username & password). It should also ignore its DHCP & firewall settings. Now I enter isp details (username & password) into the router & make sure the router firewall settings, DHCP, etc, are appropriate. I can now connect 4 computers to the 4 router ports. The router is logging in to the ISP, with the modem acting as a conduit for the network traffic

Messy workaround: modem is set to router mode (make sure the DHCP server, firewall, etc., are enabled). The modem needs the PPPoe username and password. Connect it to one of the 4 ethernet port on the router (NOT to the wan port)... Make sure the routers (fixed) IP address is set to be in the same subnet as the modems IP address & DHCP pool eg: modem is 192.168.0.1, dhcp pool is 192.168.0.3 - 192.168.0.34, so change router IP address to something like 192.168.0.111. Now, disable DHCP on the router... let the modem do the dhcp allocations.
Reboot all devices & computers. Note that this time, the modem is acting as the nat firewall (instead of the router).

advantage: works with modems that don't have a bridge mode (ie will work with all adsl modems)
disadvantage: you lose 1 ethernet port... so only 3 computers can connect instead of the usual 4.

Anyway, I take the router back to the customer & find that his modem doesn't have a bridging function (but it allows for NAT to be switched on & off... not sure why)... So I setup the system the "messy" way, and setup shared windows drives.

There is a slight hiccup with being able to view the "program files" folder, but I put it down to an interaction problem between winxp pro and winxp home.

I leave it for the moment, as I also want to setup the print server function that is available with the router (it has a usb port).

I install the printer server software from the router CD, and then what? The manual is no help, & I don't know how to print to the print server. I eventually decide to just connect the printer locally & share it out, so that the other computer can also print to it. Not as nice as using the print server function, but it works & its quicker than trawling the 'net for an answer.

Update (June 200 : I've since found that most modern routers will now operate correctly by plugging the modem into the WAN port of the router. Very little else needs to be done... but some manufacturers still have WAN ports that don't function correctly (particularly when isolating DHCP and IP addresses.

Posted by Computer Help as Technical at 5:15 PM CDT

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A new customer rings, saying he has trouble starting his system, but it sometimes works if he unplugs some devices from the USB ports.

When I get there I find a nice games system... It would have been state-of-the-art about 2 years ago & is still a high-speed system by todays standards.

It has two 35Gb sata drives (10,000 RPM) using striped RAID (Motherboard has a built-in raid controller)... That makes for a very very quick disk system. The RAID disks have windows XP pro and mostly games on them. There is also a 200GB pata drive, with mostly music on it.

The systems doesn't boot at all: it says that it cannot find any boot disk. Since I'm not familiar with this particular RAID setup & the RAID diagnostics are virtually non-existent, I ask if I can work on it from the office, but I tell him not to get his hopes up, as the RAID setup might have gotten corrupted (he says it happened once before, so he is already expecting the worst).

He also mentions that the 200GB drive was added about 1 year ago & he started having problems with the system since around that time.

Once at the office, the system boots just fine... I tell windows to do a restart & it goes back to its non-booting self.

I leave it off (power cord unplugged) for an hour, & then it starts again. This time I let it run for an hour & the system works fine... I disable the windows indexing service, & clean out the tmp directories, and there are no hiccups, even a file system check works flawlessly.

At this point, I start to suspect the 400 watt power supply & its ability to start 3 HD drives, 2 CD/DVD drives & a seriously quick AMD athlon.

I scavenge an older 300watt PS & connect it to the HD drives... Damn, these modern power supplies will not work unless there is a motherboard connected, so I also connect it to a pentium 2 mobo.

I start up the drives, then & fire up the AMD system... it works, but then fails after a restart.

I look closely at the AMD system... looking to see if there is anything else that could be causing a severe power drain.

I disconnect the CD/DVD drives, but to no avail.

I disconnect the 200GB pata disk, and all the problems disappear...

Ok, I remove the external power supply "life support" & run everything from the PCs 400watt PSU... it works just fine.

A faulty 200GB drive? I test it on the pentium 2 system nearby, & it works perfectly.

Now what else could be causing this??? At least the customer is happy to hear that he hasn't lost anything.

All the components work well in isolation... as long as they are not all joined together.

I start to suspect the "k8v se deluxe" motherboard. There are many internet forum topics about this mobo & problems associated with it.

Nobody else seems to have the exact same setup (sata raid plus a plain pata drive), so there is no direct answer to this problem (and I don't have the time to ask the question on the forums).

I suspect a bios upgrade could fix the problem (mobo has bios version 1003 & the latest available is 1007).

Given the risks in upgrading the bios:

- a bad flash

- a loss of raid configuration

- a worse or more subtle problem

And given that the customer already has another computer system, I reckon the quickest solution is to put the 200GB disk into the second system & share out the drive over the network.

Since the customer has a 4 port router (which he was unable to setup, so he currently has just 1 pc on the internet at a time). I offer to set it up & install the 200GB disk into the second system.

Customer agrees.

I return the system, setup the 200GB drive into the second system, but encounter problems with the router... but thats another story.

Posted by Computer Help as Technical at 3:15 PM CDT

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I diagnose a faulty DVD drive for a customer.

When I go back to install the drive, he also asks me to see if I can setup the laptop to print remotely to the printer connected to his desktop system.

I had previously setup the laptop, so it can connect to the internet, so I know that the network connection is fine.

I start by sharing the printer. The systems can ping each other (only the IP addresses, not the network names), but the windows networking doesn't want to play ball. The desktop system has a "my network places" icon but within that, there is just a "MSN" logo... Odd... looks like something is amiss with the registry. Since I know the networking to the internet is working, I don't want to muck around with finding a registry cure at this stage.

The laptop is new, so its networking setup looks normal.

I try disabling norton IS on both systems, & I can now setup the shared printer on the laptop... I complete the setup (after finding the printer install CD).

Of course, the printer stops working once the systems are restarted (Norton is blocking the traffic somewhere).

I cannot see how norton I.S. could be sold to average people (or worse, be bundled with most laptops sold to people)... there must be a lot of people out there who run their computers & home networks in a very limited fashion, thanks to norton crippling the network & the difficult to use and understand user interface.

Of course not having any security in place is worse, but norton I.S. needs to be more intelligent... to know what is legit local traffic & what isn't

Anyway, the solution is buried in the N.I.S. firewall, I need to make a change to the advanced settings, in order to allow printer traffic.

An awkward solution, but it works.

Posted by Computer Help as Technical at 6:07 PM CDT

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A customer calls me: He has just returned home from 3 weeks of holidays, and his computer is no longer working. He needs it for work, so I go see him the very next day.

While booting the desktop PC, what looks like a disk error appears before windows can start (ie at the bios level) The PC will sometimes get past this error & windows waits at the startup screen for over 10 minutes before generating an obscure error message.

I suspect there is a problem with the disk caddy system, so I try to connect the disks directly to the IDE cable.

The problem persists even after a direct connet to the HDD... But things seem a little better... Windows sometimes starts normally but while doing a disk check, the system suddenly reboots

I start suspecting a few "difficult to diagnose" problems (motherboard, power supply).

While looking inside the case, I notice that the CPU fan blows air directly onto one of the memory sticks... the memory & the socket its plugged into has a layer of dust, so I take out the memory, give the memory & socket a clean, then put the memory back, restart the computer & the system POST gives a continuous beeeep.

Aha! now here is a more solid problem! I take out the suspect memory & the system boots just fine. I take out the good memory & put the suspect memory in its original socket: lots of beeeeping again. I place the suspect memory into a different socket: It works perfectly.

So the memory is fine, but the socket is suspect (either faulty, or its not possible to remove all the dust). Either way, the customer is happy to leave the running system as is. He's glad to be able to get back to work (having lost a mornings work).

Posted by Computer Help as Technical at 10:00 AM CDT

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A client has new latop & needs to get it working on his home network.

Since I've dealt with him before, I know he has a fully wireless computer network.

I check the laptop settings & it all seems ok, but still no connection... it can see the WAP, but it won't connect to it, won't get an IP address & won't ping anything. An "ipconfig /all" shows the wireless adapter as being disconnected. I know the WEP password is correct, as I've previously setup another wireless computer in this household.

I start looking at the wireless access point (via its web interface, through another computer) & in wandering through the WAP menus, I come across the MAC filter menu.

It has MAC filtering switched on.

MAC filtering is a very good idea, as another computer won't be able to sneak onto the network, even if it uses the correct password the only way to get around this level of security is to know the wireless password & to hack a wireless card to use the same MAC address as an existing card (highly difficult, and can cause conflicts the original card). It would be easier to break into the house, access the WAP, & add the MAC of a new card... But then if you got physical access to the WAP, you wouldn't need to hack the network. 8-

Anyway, the WAP has a list of 4 MAC addresses, so I add the MAC address of the new laptops wireless network adapter, and then everything starts working.

Another job well done.

Posted by Computer Help as Technical at 4:54 PM CDT

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Customer recently got adsl, but email (outlook) will not work.

I first check that everything is setup correctly.

Then, I reconfigure outlook from the original dialup account details to the new adsl details.

At this point, the test button is successful, but sending fails without any error messages.

This is starting to sound familiar... I had a similar outlook problem not long ago, except:
I setup outlook express & it works flawlessly.

As I explain this to the customer, he says he doesn't mind using OE, especially considering that the other option would be to re-install outlook.

Posted by Computer Help as Technical at 4:47 PM CDT

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A customer needed some help with microsoft outlook (receiving emails but not able to send). He has a new laptop & the wife has an older laptop.

Once I get there, it starts looking a lot more complicated. They are running microsoft small business server, with exchange server.

I think: this shouldn't be too difficult, I was once an NT system administrator (10 years ago!), so I should be able to fix a small mis-configuration.

They are only using 1 email account (exchange server is probably overkill), so it's looking promising.

Apparently the whole system was set up by a somewhat unreliable computer technician, who could not (or would not) fix all the issues with the system.

I look at the server & after some time familiarising myself with the setup, I notice that the email account is close to its max quota. Just to stop the hassle of email messages about "you are going to exceed your limit", I increase the max limit.

Outlook on the older laptop is not receiving or sending emails... the wife connects to the server via remote desktop & runs outlook on the exchange server... that's not right... but it works.

The new laptop is a little better... it seems to show the email contents (ie the received emails) correctly, but cannot send emails.

I cannot be sure if the exchange server is misconfigured, and tracking down a slight mis-config could take a long time...

I look at the outlook configuration on the 2 laptops & I see that outlook has 2 accounts:
- an exchange server account... that is normal
- an account that connects directly to the isp account... now this shouldn't be necessary, the exchange server should handle that.

Anyway, I change the order of the accounts, so that the exchange server account is first, but it still doesn't work.

It looks like my predecessor might have had some trouble configuring the exchange server, so he tried to work around it by setting up the direct isp connection (the way I'd expect outlook to work without the exchange server).

Now I try many combinations with outlook (over 2 visits) but I just cannot get outlook to work consistently & I don't have the diagnostic knowledge of outlook & exchange server to be able to fix everything.

I can ping the isp mail server, but cannot get outlook nor outlook express to connect to the isp mail server... very odd.

There is not much info on the web, so that doesn't help.

In the end, I admit defeat & recommend that the customer finds someone who specialises in exchange server, as there could be multiple problems; and although I'd love to fix the problem, it would take a lot of my time & it wouldn't be fair to expect the customer to wait while I spend days experimenting, when all they want is to have it fixed "now".

Maybe someone can point me towords a good resource for diagnosing exchange server / outlook problems?

Posted by Computer Help as Technical at 10:43 AM CDT

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Customer calls me back after encountering a few further minor issues: ftp doesn't work, emails can be sent, but not received, and sound isn't working.

email is easy: smtp email address / userid is incorrect.

ftp is also easy: some sites require "passive ftp", so once this setting is enabled, it all works fine.

Sound is a bit trickier: I download some sound drivers... at 20Mb each, they take a while... the first one doesn't work, but the second one does (after a MS update over the internet).

While waiting for the downloads, we decide to call HP support, so we can get the "correct winXPMCE install CDs. It turns out the PC is still under warranty (I thought otherwise), and it has "onsite warranty" which means HP will send someone out to your house!

However, The PC must have the original failing HD installed & no non-HP hardware inside... somewhat inconvenient, given that the PC has now been almost fully repaired anyway... Anyway, we decide its not worth the hassle & decide to get the proper install CDs (for $66!)... But the friendly chap from HP says: the install CDs will only let you do a clean reinstall (none of the convenience of an in-place reinstall).

Oh well, scrap that idea... let's just wait for the sound drivers to download & see what happens (turns out they work well, since the sound isn't HP proprietary hardware).

Posted by Computer Help as Technical at 6:18 PM CDT

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