Can anyone recommend a good troubleshooting guide for setting up a broadband connection with a cable modem? My specific problem, is I upgraded a friends computer from Windows 98 2nd to Win XP home (sp2). Now they have no internet connection. The icon in the taskbar says "connected at 100 mbs", but I don't have a connection. When I try to establish a connection, by starting with the Network wizard, it says that I have limited or no connection. When I click on "repair this connection", it says that it could not be repaired because the following could not be completed, "renewing your IP address". One other note: When I upgraded to XP, I had an error message come up that the name of the computer had an illegal character in it. I had to change the computer name from "Knutson's" to Knutsons, because it wouldn't allow the apostrophe. Is this maybe the problem? If so, how to fix? -Thanks. -Red redjwood

Windows XP by default enables its software firewall. Unfortunately this tends to break things. Go into networking and disable the firewall. See if that fixes it.

Sorry, should have mentioned that I tried diabling the firewall, unplugging the power from the modem, restarting the computer, etc. redjwood

1. Check your cable connnections to make sure they're ok. Move the cable to another port (if wireless, check to make sure you've input your MAC addresses into the router and the WEP encryption key has been entered into your clients correctly). 2. Go to the Command Prompt and type PING 127.0.0.1 That's the address of your adapter and if you get an OK back, the adapter is properly installed and the drivers work. If not reload your XP drivers and try again. 3. Ping your router's IP address to see if you can reach it. 4. Run IPCONFIG/RENEW to see if you can reset your connection to the router. 5. Uninstall and reinstall Client for Microsoft Networking and the TCP/IP protocol, using the default settings. If you have any other protocols installed, remove them for now (if you need IPX for some network appliance, get that working later). Unbind NETBIOS from TCP/IP; not really needed. Reboot and see if it works now. 6. Check once again to make sure that all firewalls are disabled.

In case anyone was wondering: I found the problem with the help of the tech support at Midcontinent Cable (very helpful, suprisingly enough). What was blocking the internet connection was the firewall included in the EZ Armor package from Computer Associates. I had it installed, but had no indication that it was still running (the free trial had ended, and there was no icon showing on the taskbar). As soon as I uninstalled it, and did the repair connection thingy, then the Internet worked. redjwood