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The Network Is Down – No Internet Access

January 2, 2012 By

I sat down at my computer recently to finish writing my newsletter, only to find the hated words “Not connected.”

Windows 7 was informing me that I had no network connection. Not just no Internet access, but not even access to the other computers on my home network. This was a horrible morning.

Everything worked fine last night when I went to bed. It was time to put on my Debugging Hat…

My first step was to reboot my cable modem and my router. The process was easy and seemed to be fine. Unplug the power to the cable modem; unplug the power to the router; plug in the power to the cable modem; wait for the cable modem to download it’s configuration data from the cable Internet service provider and stabilize it’s lights, plug in the power to the router so it can make its connection to the cable modem and to the other computers and the Gigabit Ethernet switch connected to it.

But, it didn’t solve the problem…

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Filed Under: Communications, Networking, System Repair, Terry's Computer Tips, Web browsing, Windows 7 Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Wireless Problems Solved with New Router

June 7, 2010 By

Readers of my online newsletter will remember Bev’s problems of several weeks ago. Bev upgraded to Windows 7 Home. However, she was no longer able to get to Pogo.com to play games…

I had corresponded with Bev and made sure she had updated to the latest verison of Java (from www.java.com). But, Bev continued to have problems.

My last request to Bev had been that she write to tell me how she ultimately solved the proble.

This week, she wrote back to report that the problem was solved — and in a way that was quite surprising to me:

Hi Terry, Just wanted to update you on my Pogo.com issue that I wrote you about.

I ended up talking to Microsoft and they remotely assisted but after two days they couldn’t resolve the problem, called Linksys who wasn’t any help as router is outdated, called Pogo and they didn’t have any answer and called my ISP.

I finally called my friend who is super busy as computer tech and he did a few things like trying to download update firmware for my router of which wasn’t available any longer and his last fix worked, buy a new router as Windows 7 did not like my old router. So he had me buy a Netgear WNR2000-100NAS.

I did the switch and setup all by myself as their setup disc is so simple and by golly everything is working great besides being fast router for desktop as well. Thank you Terry for all your help, you are a trooper for sure. Happy Thanksgiving early.

The solution was surprising, but perhaps should not have been. Linksys has had a lot of versions upgrading and improving their WRT54G router that Bev used. Her’s was about …

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Filed Under: Communications, Networking, System Repair, Terry's Computer Tips, Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, Wireless

A First Look at Windows 7

November 15, 2009 By

Well, the install was a pain. Not really — but my initial install worked extremely smoothly until Windows rebooted.

At that point, it simply failed to boot with an ambiguous error message that was less than helpful. It told me to reboot the installation DVD and select the Repair option.

When I did selected Repair, there were five new options that showed up. Fortunately, one seemed appropiate — automatically fix the windows installation (or something like that). Unfortunately, it didn’t work. The only good thing was it told me that it was unable to fix it.

Here’s what the real problem was, which was not identified by the Windows 7 RC installation: I was trying to install Windows 7 on a Logical drive within an Extended partition. So far, every Windows version has required that it be installed in a Primary partition.

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Filed Under: Operating System, Software, System, System Repair, Terry's Computer Tips, Windows 7