Win ME lost communication

[Lenina]

Win ME can no longer communicate with my usb adsl router (Ethernet & usb), modem or network. The modem will dial in ok and check username and password, but then nothing happens. Pc also has win 2k platform and theres no problem with communications under that os, therefore not a hardware problem.
I checked network settings and cant see anything obviously wrong, but not sure - dont really understand all this stuff.
I reinstalled tcp/ip - made no diff. I reinstalled windows but it retained same installed software & settings. Run out of ideas now except remove & reinstall windows.
Please can anyone help? - got school tomorrow and tons of homework and need win me working …

Network settings:

NIC: Kingston KNE120TX

NIC settings:
IP addr 192.168.1.2
Subnet mask 255.255.255.0
Default gateway 192.168.1.1
DNS servers 192.168.1.1

ADSL Router : SMC Barricade 7401
Ip addr 192.168.1.1
Subnet mask 255.255.255.0

Location: UK

[Islam]

windows me sucks

[jumpingrat]

Originally posted by Islam
windows me sucks

And Islam is putting it nicely...:)

But seriously. It sounds like it may be a driver issue in ME. In the device manager (or whatever it's called in ME) try reinstaling the driver for your NIC (Get the latest driver from the mfr. website) and install it.

This is just a guess, and it could be a dozen other things. Hows that for covering my a**? But you got to start somewhere. Good Luck. :)

[Lenina]

thanks. I will try installing a new driver for the nic, but this could not explain why ME cant communicate with the router via usb, or why it cant communicate with the internet through the modem.

i'm kind of stuck with ME - Xerox wont release a XP or W2K driver for my printer, so the choice is NT/98/ME or new printer.

[jumpingrat]

Well sometimes a problem with one device can have an effect on other components (shrug). As for the printer, have you checked Microsoft's website to see if XP offers generic support for your printer. I had an Epson printer that had no Epson patches for XP, yet it still worked through the XP generic driver.

Just the fact that MS is no longer supporting ME should get you thinking about getting XP. Go here http://www.microsoft.com/windowsme/ to see if Microsoft has any answers for your ME problems.

Oh yah, Welcome to SG. :D

[Norm]

Do you have a software firewall installed?
or Kazaa?

[Lenina]

re printer, yes i can use a generic driver under W2K & XP, but i'd lose watermarking, booklet printing, use of extra trays & memory, and have to settle for 300 dpi instead of 600, etc.
thanks for the link - looks useful.
---
Originally posted by jumpingrat
As for the printer, have you checked Microsoft's website to see if XP offers generic support for your printer. I had an Epson printer that had no Epson patches for XP, yet it still worked through the XP generic driver.

Just the fact that MS is no longer supporting ME should get you thinking about getting XP. Go here http://www.microsoft.com/windowsme/ to see if Microsoft has any answers for your ME problems.

Oh yah, Welcome to SG. :D

[Lenina]

i had zonealarm installed but removed it on advice from SMC Europe in case it was causing a problem. SMC were useless - could not get their heads around dual platform and insisted on blaming things like the cable. But u just reminded me - i lost communication with the modem and network at the time zonealarm was uninstalled, so that might be signif.
-----

Originally posted by Norm
Do you have a software firewall installed?
or Kazaa?

[HawaiianGhost]

I recently had this prob with WMe and my Teledat 2 a/b usb modem. I would dial-in be connected but IE would not load any pages at all, showing on bottom of page "dns error". If this is what you are getting then good news is, is that there is probably nothing wrong with your modem, but double check it like ppl suggested, see if it is conflicting with another device.

In my case I had somehow gotten my "SHDOCLC.DLL" file corrupted (there is nothing that I could to do fix it). The only fix was to re-install WMe then everything worked fine and I was back on-line.
:D
What caused it? I have not a clue... But everything works now and I have a freshly installed system again...

[Lenina]

HawaiianGhost
I didn’t see “dns error” anywhere, but that may well be the problem. The modem checks out ok.
However, I remebered i had uninstalled zone alarm about the time i lost the network & modem, so i've reinstalled it and now i have activity via modem again, and via Ethernet can access the router and connect to the internet for the first time under win me. presumably uninstalling zone alarm (under advice from useless SMC Europe support) removed something vital, even though i was careful not to removed any shared files.
What I still cant do is access the router via usb, or access the network. I’ve had it all working now, but never all at the same time …...

[Norm]

Uninstalling ZA via instructions at zonelabs.com may help.
ZA leaves registry entries behind, and a couple of files unless it is uninstalled manually via those instructions. A regular uninstall isn't good enough for ZA.

Hope this helps.

[Lenina]

thanks norm.
i'll make a note.
hopefully norton will tidy things up a bit.