WIN7 HP cannot access the router
I have been doing some diagnostic work for a friend today and it seems my Win7 system will no longer connect to the network. What I did was to swap a new router (an EDIMAX one) in and out and, although I cannot be absolutely certain about the timing, it seems my Win 7 system will no longer connect to the network. I made no changes to the WIn 7 networking parameters when I did this and the system worked with the EDIMAX router, which I expected. Now I have no access to the web or my home network through this system. I have a BT router which has 4 devices connected to it (3 of them are wired and one is wireless) - only one of these devices is giving a problem. The devices that continue to work in terms of talking to each other and to the web are an XP Pro system (wired), an HP Printer (wired), and a Win 7 HP laptop (wireless) - the Dell Win 7 system (wired) is the one that no longer works - both the WIn 7 systems are Home Premium 64 bit. The wired Win 7 system appears to connect to the network monentarially each time the system boots because one or more gadgets get network based information and they show updated information, but then they very soon (within a minute or so) come up with messages saying there is no network connection. The integrated network connection (Intel 88566DC-2) shows valid lights saying it is connected to a 100 mbps network and flashes to show some network traffic. A blue light on the front of the machine tells me that I have a network connection according to the Dell hardware manual. There are no yellow exclamation marks in device manager and no hardware errors in the Event Log. I don't believe I have a Broadband, Router or Cable problem because all of these work for the other systems. This would seem to leave the 88566 or software/settings on the Win 7 wired system. If I run Windows Network Diagnostics it tells me to "Investigate router or broadband modem issues" - as mentioned above I do not believe there is an issue with this device because all other systems continue to work perfectly well with it. If I tell it to continue it tells me "The default gateway is not available", "The connection between your access point, router or cable modem is broken" and "The local area connection adapter is disabled". If I run the DELL PC Checkup software on the network adapter it says the adapter is connected, the speed is 100 mbps, it has an IPV4 address of 192.168.1.67 and a gateway address of 192.168.1.254 and DHCP is enabled. However if I ask it to run tests on the adapter it says Network Cale test - passed Network Link Test - cannot run TCP/IP Internal Loopback Test - passed Local Network Communication Test - No Connection Internet Communication Test - No Connection Data Transfer Verification Test - Cannot Run Does anyone have any clues as to what is going on here and what I could try to get my network connection back please?Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64 Bit - Dell XPS420 6GB
May 29th, 2011 7:00pm

Hi, After checking this issue, I suggest you perform the following steps to check your problem: 1. Boot into Safe Mode with networking to check what the result is. 2. Reinstall the network driver: a) On the device Properties dialog box, click the Driver tab, and then click Uninstall. Follow the instructions. b) Restart your computer. c) Open Device Manager, click Action, and then click Scan for hardware changes. Follow the instructions. 3. Switch to another router port for test. 4. If it is possible, please try another network environment to check how it works. Hope it helps. Alex ZhaoPlease remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.
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May 31st, 2011 2:02am

Hi Alex Many thanks for looking into this. I think I have resolved the problem but before I mention what I did let me say that I treied uninstalling and reinstalling the network device and I also went out and bought and installed a second network card which made no difference to the symptoms. The thing that realy puzzled me about this, and perhaps was the clue I should have paid more attentionn to, was that it appeared that networking would work as soon as the machine was booted but then seemed to fail - within a minute or so of the machine fully booting. And indeed this was what was happening because I cured the problem by resetting the firewall to its defaults! Somehow during the swapping of the routers a key rule must have got changed - perhaps inadvertently by me (but I don't think so), or maybe the system changed it because of what I was doing. Anyway the system has been running OK for 24 hours now so I think I'm safe in saying the problem has been resolved. I've learnt two things from this - the first is that all the clever diagnostics in Win 7 did not identify the cause of this problem and the best they could do was to say that DHCP was not active or that I had a modem/router issue - both of which seem a bit far away from the truth. The second thing I learnt was that my McAfee firewall is obviously not protecting my system during the first couple of minutes during boot up - this I was surprised at since I had expected the firewall to have been active before networking started, but you learn something new every day. I'm a bit worried about this now especially when you know that Win 7 sometimes boots the machine in the early hours of the morning (I leave it on 24 x 7 running a 'good works' soaker) and the boot-up/logon process does not finish until I get to the machine around 8 AM or so. Anyway, thanks for your interest and suggestions, BernardWindows 7 Home Premium SP1 64 Bit - Dell XPS420 6GB
May 31st, 2011 11:32am

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