[jfruh]

Hello all-

I have two Windows XP -- one Home, one Professional -- machines attempting to connect wirelessly to a vanilla Netgear access point. The XP Pro machine connects fine. The XP Home machine sees the Wi-Fi network, connects, accepts the password, and says it's connected -- but Web browsers and other Windows network apps will not connect to the Internet (they just hang for a long time before timing out).

But! If I open a command prompt, I can ping external sites and even use command-line ftp to connect to sites without a problem!

I've gone over the network configuration of both machines and can't see any difference between the two. The Netgear access point doesn't have any kind of MAC address filtering turned on. Is there something I should be looking for that I'm missing?

As an extra added strange data point -- I've tried to connect to the network via a Mac OS X machine and saw the same behavior as on the XP Home machine -- GUI-based programs won't connect, but command-line utilities will. Meanwhile, an Apple iPhone was able to connect and work perfectly.

Thanks in advance for any advice!

Josh

[Squashman]

Are you pinging by IP address and domain name?
Can you post the output of ipconfig /all from one of your machines and the output of the ping results by ip and domain.

[jfruh]

Hi Squashman! Thanks for taking an interest in my puzzle!

I've pasted the results of the commands below. Please note that I typed these by hand -- is there a way to cut text from the C Prompt that I'm missing? -- so I didn't preserve the spacing. I ran the ipconfig /all command, pinged site via the domain name, then pinged the same site via its IP address. I should note that the info about the subnet mask, DNS servers, DNS suffix, gateway, DHCP server and the like are identical to the info that showed up from the same command on the laptop that can connect to the network.

**Here's the ipconfig /all output:**

Windows IP Configuration


Host Name: nancy-mxe1wc1ba
Primary Dns suffix:
Node Type: Unknown
IP Routing Enabled: No
WINS Proxy Enabled: No
DNS Suffix Search List: buffalo.rr.com

Ethernet adapte Local Area Connection 2:

Media State: Media disconnected
Description: Marvell Yukon 88E8036 PCI-E Fast Ethernet Controller
Physical Address: 00-E0-B8-B3-58

Ethernet Adapter Wireless Network Connection 3:

Connection-specific DNS Suffix: buffalo.rr.com
Description: Broadcom 802.11g Network Adapter
Physical Address: 00-14-A5-89-22-E2
Dhcp Enabled: Yes
Autoconfiguration Enabled: Yes
IP Address: 192.168.0.5
Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway: 192.168.0.1
DHCP Server: 192.168.0.1
DNS Servers: 24.92.226.40
24.92.226.41

Lease obtained: Tuesday, October 20, 2009 6:57:20 PM
Lease expires: Friday, October 23, 2009 6:57:20 PM

**Here's a ping to a domain (joshreads.com, my Web site):**

Pinging joshreads.com [207.58.187.176] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 207.58.187.176: bytes=32 time=40ms TTL=48
Reply from 207.58.187.176: bytes=32 time=69ms TTL=48
Reply from 207.58.187.176: bytes=32 time=56ms TTL=48
Reply from 207.58.187.176: bytes=32 time=75ms TTL=48

Ping statistics for 207.58.187.176:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approxmate roud trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 40 ms, Maximum = 75 ms, Average = 60 ms

**And then I pinged the same site using just the IP address:**

Pinging 207.58.187.176 with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 207.58.187.176: bytes=32 time=68ms TTL=48
Reply from 207.58.187.176: bytes=32 time=58ms TTL=48
Reply from 207.58.187.176: bytes=32 time=80ms TTL=48
Reply from 207.58.187.176: bytes=32 time=98ms TTL=48

Ping statistics for 207.58.187.176:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approxmate roud trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 58 ms, Maximum = 98 ms, Average = 76 ms

[TerryNet]

Two possibilities are a non-Windows firewall or security suite blocking your browser or you have a proxy server specified.

With respect to your question about copying text from a Command prompt ...

Right click in the command window and choose Select All, then hit Enter.
Paste the results in a message here. (hitting Enter puts the text onto the clipboard) Also, if you click on the little icon in the extreme upper left of a Command window you will find an Edit sub-menu with choices such as Mark to select just the desired text.

[jfruh]

Thanks for the info.

I have learned a bit more about the history of this computer. Apparently it used to work fine on this network but had a malware attack and my parents brought it to the guy who fixes their computer stuff. He completely wiped the hard drive and reinstalled from scratch, and also installed an anti-virus/firewall program called Webroot. My stepmom says it had McAfee on at one time but that should have been wiped off entirely. The laptop connected fine to the network at their computer guy's house but not here.

What should I check in Webroot to see if it's blocking things? How can I check the Windows proxy settings? I am really much more of a Mac guy than a Windows guy, but the really puzzling thing is that my Mac is exhibiting the same behavior (I can connect via the command line there but not via UI programs) and it doesn't have any antivirus software or anything like that.

Thanks in advance for your help!

[TerryNet]

I know nothing about Webroot. Does it have a manual or a help menu?

If you are using IE for your browser: Control Panel - Internet Options - Connections tab - LAN settings - you should have nothing checked on the LAN Settings page.