We tried all of that already. He has a modem & router that are separate. I have the all in one router/modem. Both of our routers/modems work since other computers we have connect to them without any problems. I even disabled all security settings and used another wireless adapter to see if they work. I'm sure some software is causing the block but he doesn't want to waste more time working on this laptop...it's not his, but one of his neighbor's laptop. So he'll see if they need any data backed up first and then just reinstall Windows since they need it back. I know it's not the best approach, but it's worth it to them since it will probably take around 2 hours to install Windows and other programs they have (which doesn't seem to be a lot).

I also have some problems trying to connect my PC to a laptop, everything is fine i can see the connection working but i don't know how to acces the laptops files >.<

@black shadow: You seem to have a different problem there. You are trying to connect to another machine and it sounds like it works except that you didn't share any files on the laptop. So go to the laptop and right click on the folder you want to share and go to Properties->Sharing tab. Enable sharing for that folder and you should be able to see that folder now on the network.

I have an update on the wireless problem. He tried Knoppix yesterday and the thing went online (both wireless and wireline). Told him to disable some of the network programs and see if it helps

About the laptop...glad hes part solved now



Must be some kind of conflict in the way windows is handling the connection..ie the settings your inputting..and then some kinda firewall software or even windows firewall or Norton net utils stopping you from getting it to work.

You will just have to work out which program it is..maybe get a screenshot of the running processes and put it up here so we can have a look and see if theres anything we can spot right away.



But you know it CAN work ok via knpoppix..so the light is at the end of the tunnel!



Good Luck!

Marky;)

Yeah, he's getting close to something. Too bad he won't let me work on it (it's not his so he can't just give it to me LOL). I'm sure I know what to look for in the processes. Didn't think about the possible network processes causing the problem last time, otherwise I would have looked at it already Live and learn...hehe...

UPDATE: He got it working again. He went back to disable the programs and finally got McAfee (that little devil) disabled. I guess we didn't "disable" it properly last time when he brought it over. He just configured the McAfee Firewall to allow the internet access and all is working well now

McAfee is the cause of all problems... it's far worse than Norton Internet Security. NIS just holds grudges against the local network (it doesn't even allow a Novell client to login to a server on the local network). But from what I've heard about McAfee, it is garbage.

And of course, 99.9% of all network problems I encounter are software problems (e.g. Windows or security software).

[N]F

I haven't used either of these personally but have worked on machines that had them.

Totally agree with you nightfox. My old co-worker had a similar issue around a year ago and had to disable McAfee (phone support walked him through it all).

Not a fan of Norton either as I have seen it suck up resources on many machines before.

You could put zonealarm coupled with a standalone antivirus or just use the zonealrm security suite. I've had no problems with this kind of setup in a networked environment. The only problem about using this is possible conflicts and the initial setting up of both programs.
Otherwise this can be the best solution, doesn't use too much resources as well.

-HellFire

I was surprised by McAfee just 2 days ago, when i have to network 2 pc toghether. Both pc has preinstalled McAfee (with anti virus and firewall). After connecting the 2 pc, i can't access the apache running on one of it. So first thought is ping. Ping didn't work. After testing the network cables with my laptop and my colleague's, we're sure that the cable is working. After a while of tinkering, we finally realized bout McAfee, so went ahead and disabled it, voila, everything works like charm.

Where as Norton, i've not use for quite number of years. I used to be a fan of norton when their norton disk doctor was far better then win98's scandisk. Norton speeddisk and my favourite diskedit, i use that to manually recovered data, such as a few harddisk suffered from CIH's attack. That was, i would say legend. Now i don't like norton anymore, same reason with WeaponX, resource hog. And they seems to target fancy UI rather than actual functionality.