cant connect my laptop to the internet

hello everyone, im having a problem with getting my laptop connect to the internet through our home network, and im like 90% sure the problems with the laptop and not the network. when go to connect to the network it tells me that im connected with no problems and that everythings working the way its supposed to but when i go to open browser it thinks im offline, same with gaim, p2p networks and all other programs that connect to the internet. my desktop computer is also on this computer and so is my other laptop, and they do not have this problem, then also today at school i tried to connect to their access point and the same thing, it said i was connected fine but then i couldnt get internet. i tried using the settings transfer wizard from my desktop to my laptop and that didnt work, and im about to try reformatting and reinstalling if i dont get anymore ideas (this happened before and that fixed it). anyone know whats going on with my laptop?

The first thing I would suggest doing is checking your network adapter in device manager and make sure it's not showing any conflicts.

What OS are you on? Is the network card onboard or PCMCIA? Have you tried any other browser besides Internet Explorer? Have you run any virus scans or spyware removal tools?

im running a fresh install of xp with sp2. and its neither onboard or pcmcia, its usb, and i did check it and there are no conflicts. and i absolutly despise ie so i only use firefox, but i did try ie.

Hmmm ...wierd. That's a strange one for sure.

yes it sure is, well thanks for the help anyway, i guess ill reinstall my system and see if that works again ( i dont have any programs installed yet so its no loss)

Before you reinstall, did you check to make sure that your NIC is on the hardware compatability list from MS?

yea i did, i got internet before, just one day out of nowhere i couldnt connect anymore, it was wierd cause i dont recall changing any settings

I had similar problems with a Vaio laptop before. The NIC showed connected to the network but when I tried to access anything it either disconect or throw a time out even sometimes it worked well. I later discover this NIC does not support 100Mbps Full Duplex (we upgraded that network from 10 to100 Mbps and the laptop worked well on 10mbps), I changed its Link Speed and Duplex from "Auto Detect" to "10Mbps/Full Duplex" and it worked well. What brand is your NIC? Try changing its speed using the NIC's properties to see if it works.

Here are a couple steps you can take to check to see where the problem is:

#1) check for a link light on both ends
No light on either side - Bad wire? Bad NIC? Is the drive for the NIC installed?
Light on one end and not the other - Usually a bad cable, could be a bad NIC, basically device 1 is transmitting and device 2 is recieving (one light) but device 1 isn't recieving a signal from device 2 (no light) usually a broken wire or lose connection but sometimes is a bad RJ45 port.

#2) Local IP number:
Ok, you got links, so they are talking. Lets see what the problem is:
For Win9x machines you would START > RUN > WINIPCFG

For WinNT,2K,XP you would START > RUN > CMD
at the prompt you would type:
>ipconfig /all




Ok, first make sure that DHCP enabled is set to Yes, or you won't get an IP issued to you unless you have it statically set, which if you are plugging into a router or AP then you don't want to statically set it.

What is the Number you see next to IP Address? write it down.

Step #3: DHCP
type:
> ipconfig /release {enter}
(the IP address should display as 0.0.0.0)
> ipconfig /renew {enter}
If the IP address goes back to the number you had written down then this part looks like DHCP is working fine
If the IP address is set to 169.x.x.x, usually means it's not getting an IP from a DHCP server and the network will not work.

Step #4: DNS
type:
> ping 216.109.117.110
it should repsond "Pinging 216.109.117.110 with 32 bytes of data:"
if that works try typing:

> ping http://www.yahoo.com
it should respond "Pinging http://www.yahoo.something.something blah blah blah"

If both work then your problem isn't with basic connectivivty. If the first works and the second fails, then you are able to 'talk' to the outside world, but DNS isn't working. If neither ping works then you are not talking to the outside world and I would suggest posting your results of the above steps so that people on the boards can help you find out where the problem is.


I hope this helps, let us know one way or the other