Vista ISC with XP client solution
I recently introduced my first Vista PC (SP1) to my home network and encountered hours of frustration trying to share my Sprint Wireless Broadband connection with a couple of Windows XP workstations and a Mac laptop. Previously, an XP home workstation hosted ICS without any notable difficulties. My ConfigurationThe setup is a little unusual because I don't have a router for the broadband modem, which is plugged into the USB port of my ICS host, which again is Vista Home Premium. The client is XP Home, SP2. I had chosen my Wireless Network Connection as the network interface to share with my Sprint "3G Connection". As for the network, it is almost entirely wireless. There is a Dlink 802.11g wireless router which is connected to a laser printer by an ethernet cable. This router serves as an access point for the client PCs. The ICS host also communicates to this router wirelessly. I believe this may be the root of my problems.The Symptoms When I enabled ICS, it caused my default gateway on the Wireless Network Connection to change to 192.168.0.1, which in turn caused it to be displayed as an "Unidentified Network". If I changed the gateway to point to the router, the network name was displayed, but it didn't fix the ICS problems. DNS lookup worked I could ping sites via the internet I could tracert successfully Strangely, I could access gmail.com, but could not accessany other websites via a browser.Rabbit Trails and Dead EndsThere's lots of information about various forms of ICS problems. I tried the following to no avail: Editing the registry to add a new key value for "DhcpConnDisableBcastFlagToggle" which had something to do with a Broadcast Flag. Changing my connections from Private to Public, and back and forth. Dropping the wireless connections and recreating them Dropping my internet connection and recreating it. Dropping and recreating all connections Sharing the Wireless Network Connection (didn't finish successfully) Sharing an unplugged local ethernet connection (didn't finish successfully) Changing the default gateway in my Wireless Network Connection after enabling ICS. I changed it from 192.168.0.1 to the IP address of my wireless router. This fixed the problem of the network being "Unidentified", but not much else. Creating a bridge between my Sprint G3 Connection and my Wireless Network Connection. This wasn't possible in the end. A few others, I'm sure The Final Solution Finally, I tried a variation on the bridge solution. I did all of the following steps with both the Windows and Norton Personal Firewalls disabled. It took a bit of fiddling to findsettings that worked. Since there are so many firewalls out there, I won't attempt to guide youon this. I just recommend turning them off during setup, just so they don'tintroduceconfusion. This time I created a bridge between my unplugged local ethernet connection and my Wireless Network Connection by going to the "Network Connections" section of the Control Panel, selecting the two, right-clicking, and selecting "Bridge". Next, I shared my Sprint G3 Connection and voila!, it worked. I chose to designate the G3 Connection as "Public" and the other, which showed as "Unidentified Network", as "Private". That's what I did to the best of my recollection. I don't dare try to undo it and redo it just to test the steps. One other thing... Creating a shared dial-up Sprint EVDO connectionFor those of you who are trying to share a Sprint EVDO connection, one problem you'll run into is that you'll be told you can't share the connection unless your user is logged in because the connection (which is automatically created by Sprint's Connection Manager) isn't shared with all users. There's no property I could find to share the dial-up connection, so the only method is to start from scratch. The problem there is you get to a point where you're supposed to enter the phone number, usercode, and password. Well here's what I did: Deleted the Sprint "3G Connection". Created a new internet connection, selecting the Share with all Users option near the bottom of the dialog. For the phone number, use #777 For the usercode and password, enter whatever you please. It doesn't matter. I think it gets it from the modem itself. I named the connection "3G Connection" Next, I dialed the connection from the Sprint Connection Manager. I don't know if that was necessary, but I had guessed that it might update the usercode and password. Whatever it did or did not do, it worked.Best of luck. Hope this helps someone.
March 31st, 2008 4:29am

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