Hi all,

My wife was happily working away on her work computer (installed at
our home by "local council who shall remain nameless") when suddenly
the scren went black and now it refuses to play TCP/IP. Specifically,
she can't login to her VPN connection.She rang the council's tech
support and a woman who didn't seem to know a great deal about
networking told my wife it must be our internet connection. My wife
told her our machine was working fine on the internet, and the woman
then said it must be the network cable.

I came in an hour or two later and tried a few tings, I established
that our computer (connected to the BT Homehub) could ping the
council's computer, but when I tried to ping our's from it it came up
with an error someting along the lines of

Unable to transmit - error 65.

I googled the error and allthat I foundwere refs to PCs which are
running Zone Alarm (the council machine might be for all I know,
though it's not obvious that it's installed.

I tried releseing and renewing it's ip address, and that went fine, so
it seems that it's got some connectivity, but it won't do the wholeTCP/
IP thing.

My thoughts are....

1. The council has altered some firewall setting on the pc using group
policy or some such which now prevents connection.

2. Something has just gone wrong randomlywith a firewall or maybe the
TCP/IP stack in the council machine.

3. The BT Homehub has "taken agin" the council PC for some reason and
won't let it talk to the outside world. I did try a few google
searches today to see if the BT Broadband community were up in arms
over similar problems, but it doesn't seem to be widespread.

Anyone have any ideas which is the most likely and or how to go about
fixing it? Or any other ideas as to what might be the problem? She
will of course get back to the council, but she's expecting to have to
fight her way to someone who know's what they are talking about.

In message
,
writes
Hi all,

My wife was happily working away on her work computer (installed at
our home by "local council who shall remain nameless") when suddenly
the scren went black and now it refuses to play TCP/IP. Specifically,
she can't login to her VPN connection.

I came in an hour or two later and tried a few tings, I established
that our computer (connected to the BT Homehub) could ping the
council's computer, but when I tried to ping our's from it it came up
with an error someting along the lines of

Unable to transmit - error 65.

I googled the error and allthat I foundwere refs to PCs which are
running Zone Alarm (the council machine might be for all I know,
though it's not obvious that it's installed.

I tried releseing and renewing it's ip address, and that went fine, so
it seems that it's got some connectivity, but it won't do the wholeTCP/
IP thing.

My thoughts are....

1. The council has altered some firewall setting on the pc using group
policy or some such which now prevents connection.

2. Something has just gone wrong randomlywith a firewall or maybe the
TCP/IP stack in the council machine.

3. The BT Homehub has "taken agin" the council PC for some reason and
won't let it talk to the outside world. I did try a few google
searches today to see if the BT Broadband community were up in arms
over similar problems, but it doesn't seem to be widespread.

Anyone have any ideas which is the most likely and or how to go about
fixing it? Or any other ideas as to what might be the problem? She
will of course get back to the council, but she's expecting to have to
fight her way to someone who know's what they are talking about.

Some corruption within Windows causing some problem with the network
connection? I wondering if the machine crashed when it got the black
screen.

Alternatively I'd suspect a hardware problem with the network card.

How locked down is the machine? Are you able to boot the machine from a
Lnux Lice CD (or USB stick)? I'd start by trying to booting one of the
live distributions, this will at least show if the network
card/connection work ok or not.
--
Chris French

On 5 Oct, 12:57, wrote:
Hi all,

My wife was happily working away on her work computer (installed at
our home by "local council who shall remain nameless") when suddenly
the scren went black and now it refuses to play TCP/IP. Specifically,
she can't login to her VPN connection.She rang the council's tech
support and a woman who didn't seem to know a great deal about
networking told my wife it must be our internet connection. *My wife
told her our machine was working fine on the internet, and the woman
then said it must be the network cable.

I came in an hour or two later and tried a few tings, I established
that our computer (connected to the BT Homehub) could ping the
council's computer, but when I tried to ping our's from it it came up
with an error someting along the lines of

Unable to transmit - error 65.

I googled the error and allthat I foundwere refs to PCs which are
running Zone Alarm (the council machine might be for all I know,
though it's not obvious that it's installed.

I tried releseing and renewing it's ip address, and that went fine, so
it seems that it's got some connectivity, but it won't do the wholeTCP/
IP thing.

My thoughts are....

1. The council has altered some firewall setting on the pc using group
policy or some such which now prevents connection.

2. Something has just gone wrong randomlywith a firewall or maybe the
TCP/IP stack in the council machine.

3. The BT Homehub has "taken agin" the council PC for some reason and
won't let it talk to the outside world. *I did try a few google
searches today to see if the BT Broadband community were up in arms
over similar problems, but it doesn't seem to be widespread.

Anyone have any ideas which is the most likely and or how to go about
fixing it? *Or any other ideas as to what might be the problem? *She
will of course get back to the council, but she's expecting to have to
fight her way to someone who know's what they are talking about.

I would eliminate different bits by
(a) borrow a different computer and try to get into the VPN. Or if
you have a WiFi smartphone try that with the router.
(b) borrow a different router and do the same
(c) do both at once
(d) go to someone else's house and try their computer using your
access codes
(e) check they haven't changed the access code. Is it sent out as a
TXT to her mobile ?


rusty

In article ,
writes:
Hi all,

My wife was happily working away on her work computer (installed at
our home by "local council who shall remain nameless") when suddenly
the scren went black and now it refuses to play TCP/IP. Specifically,
she can't login to her VPN connection.She rang the council's tech
support and a woman who didn't seem to know a great deal about
networking told my wife it must be our internet connection. My wife
told her our machine was working fine on the internet, and the woman
then said it must be the network cable.

I came in an hour or two later and tried a few tings, I established
that our computer (connected to the BT Homehub) could ping the
council's computer, but when I tried to ping our's from it it came up
with an error someting along the lines of

It's quite likely the computer is setup so it can only talk to
the council's network, and even any internet browsing goes via
the council's network so they can filter out anything they don't
want on their computers. So I would not necessarily take the
inability to access any other computers in your home from it as
a fault. That's how many companies setup their VPNs.

Anyone have any ideas which is the most likely and or how to go about
fixing it? Or any other ideas as to what might be the problem? She
will of course get back to the council, but she's expecting to have to
fight her way to someone who know's what they are talking about.

Unless you have details of how they've setup the system, you're
going to have to do some detective work, and the system might have
been setup so you can't anyway.

--
Andrew Gabriel
[email address is not usable -- followup in the newsgroup]

On 5 Oct, 15:55, (Andrew Gabriel) wrote:
In article ,
* * * * writes:

snip

Anyone have any ideas which is the most likely and or how to go about
fixing it? *Or any other ideas as to what might be the problem? *She
will of course get back to the council, but she's expecting to have to
fight her way to someone who know's what they are talking about.

Unless you have details of how they've setup the system, you're
going to have to do some detective work, and the system might have
been setup so you can't anyway.

Thanks for that Andrew, it hadn't occured to me that the behaviour I
was seeing might be "normal".

Certainly there is no IE icon while the VPNisn't connected, though I
can get to the run command and control panel.

It is always possible that the fault has cleared by now.

Cheers

Chris