Thanks, Wayne. You've given me a lot of things to look at.
As to the laptop's use while it was away: Yes, it was used for WiFi
access fairly extensively in multiple locations and, in particular, at
our friend's house in London. However, there was nothing unusual about
that other than being away for 7 weeks. But even that is nothing
unusual. When we go to Florida for the winter we are away for 3-4
months, take the laptop with us, use it for WiFi access in our Florida
place, bring it home, disable the radio, plug it into the wired
connection and it's back up and running just as though it never left
(including printing to both the old laser printer and the HP color
inkjet) That reminds me I didn't try the HP color printer where no
configuration change has taken place. Just tried that and it doesn't
work either which points right back to no network communication.
But there are possible changes that I may have no knowledge of. While
my wife was on the QM2 on the way to England she tried to send me email
using the ship's WiFi access. She was not successful so she went to see
the ship's IT people. They told her that email via chucknorcutt.com
wouldn't work. They said it would only work if it was Yahoo, Gmail or
some other common mail server. But they tried to accommodate her by
setting up the laptop with the ship as mail server. Whatever they did
never worked. The only thing it accomplished was destroying my original
Thunderbird email settings such that she couldn't use email after she
got off the ship either. I had to email the proper settings to our host
in London who then got Thunderbird emailing via chucknorcutt.com again.
All of that leaves open a question of what else they might have changed
that I have no knowledge of. WiFi access worked fine all during that
trip but, of course, there was no local net tried or needed until it
came back home.
I'm going to try all of the stuff you've suggested (paying particular
attention to passwords and the guest account but it may take a while.
She's using the laptop now and is not very sympathetic to my need for
debugging sessions. :-)
As to the printer not being network connected that's because I didn't
spring for the more expensive Brother HL-5350DN model. There's no Cat5
connector. This HL-5340D (no "N" in the model #) one only has USB and
parallel connections. If fact, the printer is actually connected to
LPT3. The old printer was very old (late 90s maybe?) and only had a
parallel connection. The desktop is much more modern than that and
didn't even have a parallel port. So I added one to support the old
printer. Now, I have so many USB devices that I'm short of USB ports.
That's why I installed the new printer in the same physical place and
using the same 10 foot parallel cable that has been in use for many
years. I was afraid the speed of the parallel cable might limit the
printer but this printer is much, much faster than the old one. Any
prior speed limit was in the printer and not the electrical interface.
I think I am going to uninstall the printer from the laptop and work on
getting the network running properly starting with your suggestions.
Then I'll re-install the printer and hope the installer is smart enough
to find where the printer is on the network.
Thanks again,
Chuck Norcutt
On 7/30/2011 8:31 AM, WayneS wrote:
> At 7/29/2011 10:58 PM, you wrote:
>> The laptop isn't attaching to a neighbor's wifi connection, is it?
>>
>> AG
>
> Yes, was the laptop used for internet access during the trip?
>
> On the local machine command prompt, some network commands I have
> found helpful:
>
> netstat -n
>
> will show all the active connections.
>
> route print
>
> will show the routing table.
>
> arp -a
>
> will show IP to network adapter tables (IP to MAC address). When you
> ping another machine, it first goes to the gateway to resolve the IP
> to MAC address, then sends the message to that mac address.
>
> ipconfig/all
>
> shows all the network settings.
>
> Printouts of some of these commands would be helpful.
>
> Win 7 to XP file sharing always was a chore to debug, but in Win xp I
> always check certain settings. Right click on My Computer and click
> manage... or better from Start menu type gpedit.msc. I'm on Win 7 so
> may be different on xp, but go to windows settings>Local
> Policies>Security Options and check the network settings:
>
> In particular, I always have Network Access: Sharing and Security
> model for local accounts> Classic - local users authenticate as
> themselves, but that means there has to be a user account on each
> machine. Guest account access is often limited.
>
> Were any user login passwords changed? Most MS updates rarely change
> these security settings, but it is possible.
>
> However, you are saying nothing has changed except the new printer on
> the network, hence the question was the laptop used to connect while
> traveling?
>
> I always shut off the firewall to debug until things get working,
> then turn back on later to see if it breaks.
>
> And as mentioned, you can try to share a drive using the IP address.
> Name resolution can sometimes be hit or miss, depending on Netbios,
> but the \\IP\share David suggested should get around the name
> resolution issue. If that does not work, then check the if the login
> name/password has changed.
>
> When you got the new printer, I'm surprised it was not directly
> connected to the network rather than being shared through the desktop
> machine.
>
> Wayne
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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