I am trying to help a colleague set up their internet connection on a new pc. The pc is plugged into a cisco router803 which works fine (we have another machine also plugged into it.)

The problem we have is that when we try to enable the LAN is says connection failed. All the IP addresses are set and correct.

The machine is 150 miles away from me and the user is not very pc literate.

Can anyone give any ideas as to how I can get the lan to connect?

It is an XP machine

IS he using DSL/Cable modem? can he get to the Internet? can he ping any websites? are you using the private range of 10.0.0.X or 192.168.0.X? can he ping the other worksta? are you using the routers DHCP service? need more to go on..

The router connects to the internet via an ISDN line. The other computer connected to the router can connect to the internet.

The problem computer cannot ping anywhere, it is not showing up on the router as being connected to it - we have checked all the cables and they are fine.

The IP address is in a private range 10.128 etc.

Sorry don't know what DHCP service is.

Do you know if the ISDN line is working? is this a new line? has it worked in the pass ? if it is , you should call you the local phone and have them check the line? it would be better off to move him to DSL? is there a reason why he is using ISDN?

Yes the line works fine as the other pc can connect to the internet without any problem. We use ISDN at all our sites with 2 pcs connected via the router.

The new pc that isn't working is replacing an old windows 98 machine that previously connected to the internet with no problems. Therefore I believe the problem is with the PC maybe the network card.

then just start pinging out, do a ipconfig from the dos prompt.. C:>ipconfig /all ,, and see if your receving a vailid ip address.

when you try ipconfig the following message apears:

windows ip config: an internal error occured
A device conected to the system is not functioning.

Further info: unknown media status code.

Hope this makes sense

Check the network card in Device Manager ... is it working? Disabled?

I have had this problem before with some of the computers on my network. If the IPconfig error is telling us that the driver is not installed properly or that the NIC card is not physicall connected to the motherboard. I would first try to make sure that the NIC card is seated in the Slot and next I would look for an updated driver for the NIC card and install it.

1) Ping 127.0.0.1. If you get an OK back your network adapter is probably working OK.

2. Disable the XP firewall. This is the most common problem with networking XP because it installs with the Firewall enabled and when you install SP2 the Firewall goes back up automatically even if you had disabled it previously. As long as the PC sits behind a router it's protected by the router's firewall so you don't need the XP firewall, really. If you need a software firewall I'd suggest ZoneAlarm or Tiny or Norton Personal Firewall because they're easier to configure and monitor.

3) Once you've worked out the firewall situation ping the server to see if it is reachable. If not you may have to reset the TCP/IP parameters to match those required by your network. Sometimes you have to reinstall TCP/IP to get it working again. XP doesn't make it easy to reset TCP/IP but fortunately there's a NETSH command to roll back TCP/IP to the default settings.
Simply type the following in Command Prompt:

netsh int ip reset c:\resetlog.txt

and any changes to TCP/Ip since installation will be reverted.