for the love of god - help! (tcp/ip problem in lindows)
 

My boyfriend is having this problem, he is running Lindows. Suddenly his internet isn't working. He can dialup, send info (say to log onto GAIM or IRC) but nothing is recieved back. He can ping people and websites though. He says it's a TCP/IP problem. I have no idea, being a dopey windows user. But he is sending me to look for help, since he can't get on the internet from his PC now.
Please email me or post if you can help. We have tried everything we can think of.

Here's some questions for him:

1. Is it a WinModem?, If not,
2. What kind of modem is it?
3. What happens when he uses a text only browser like lynx to surf the web?
(what does it say?)
4. What are the error messages he receives on the console when he runs web apps like email?

You see, when he pings someone and the ping packet comes back, he is receiving something back of course. We need more information before anything can be diagnosed.

Bert

i've no real idea how much lindows hides the important stuff (popular opinion says lindows sucks as far as Linux goes in case you weren't aware:)) but, assuming you can open a terminal, tell us what /sbin/ifconfig tells you when you run it. can you ping anyone from a terminal as well.

so what HAVE you tried? i can appreciate you're not into this sort of thing, but you really need to provide as much information as you can find... maybe you're other half should have posted himself.

Actually I believe he said it IS a Win Modem. I think he mentioned he was going to try to boot into Mandrake(sp?) and see if he can find drivers for it, and try to get it to work through there.
Could this all just be a driver problem though? Even if there is no difference in file size? I know one day the power zapped out, and his computer shut itself down somehow. He has one of those UPS(?) surge protectors that beep when the power goes out, and supplies power for a minute or so, and shuts down if the power isn't returned. So could that have caused a problem with drivers somehow? I can't remember if this problem happened before or after that incident.

It's just weird.. he gets errors about time outs mainly from everything. But pings work. In every browser he has, he gets a time out error.
I think I've said everything he's tried.
He has been using that "diff" command to see if any files have been changed or corrupt, from the driver discs. Although I dont think that is gonna be a huge help.
I'm just wondering if removing the modem and reinstalling it, hardware, drivers and all might help or not.
I think I'll suggest it to him when I speak to him next.

well if he can ping then the hardware will be fine. maybe you have no nameservers set in /etc/hosts?

Not sure about that, but I planned on writing down any help or oppinions I could get, and getting it to him. So if you can think of anything else, post it and we'll see if that's the problem. Thanks :-)

Any other suggesstions? I'm gonna be speaking with him tonight... if nothing works I'll post any new errors and all..

Ask him to check again. If you weren't aware, the net has just been through a firestorm in the form of SQL Slammer, which took out most of Asias connectivity amongst other things. I didn't notice any problems, but his connection issues may have been the net itself playing up.

A quick checklist to try:

1) ping 66.218.71.198
This will ping yahoo bypassing DNS. If he gets pings back with reasonable times (200-500ms), continue to

2) ping yahoo.com
This checks DNS. If you get the same as above, continue to

3) Type this exactly as shown:

telnet google.com 80
GET / HTTP/1.1
Host: google.com

Make sure you leave hit enter twice at the end of the Host line, it will only do things once you have entered a blank line to signal the end of the headers. You should get back a "this document has moved" message. If that works, continue to

4) Open up a web browser, enter a URL. If you get a timeout, check to make sure there isn't a proxy set somewhere. if you get a page back, party and make merry, for all should be well.


Let us know how he gets on.

Actually he did try pinging yahoo and google before, so I don't think that'll help. He can ping things but can do no more for some reason. Almost like a firewall is keeping stuff from coming back to him, although he disabled his firewall, and still nothing changed.
Also it couldn't have been the net acting up from the SQL Slammer, because I could get on the internet fine with my laptop at his home. So that way we knew it wasn't his lines or the connection itself.

In that case try the telnet step