my friend and i use msn a lot to share files, small things like music and flash pages, and he wanted to turn off his hardware firewall and all that to speed things up so i told him to open a dmz port on his router with his ip and he did and rebooted the thing and thats when things went haywire he can no longer access the things setup page with 192.168.1.1 and ive tried to do the same with 3 different computers all connected directly to it using internet explorer and firefox and typing 192.168.1.1 in the browsers also the reset button on the thing no longer works, i hold in it for an entire minute and nothing happens we've tried to reset it by unplugging its power and waiting and pluggin back in still doesnt change a thing my friend had it up using it for a week after this dmz disaster and he could get online but it would randomly crash on him and he would have to reset it and reset his computer (windows 98 SE) we cant ping it using cmd and ping 192.168.1.1 the only time pinging it works is when we assign ourselves a static ip like 192.168.0.4 and eventhough we can ping it then, we cant get online and we still cant access its setup in browser, i have tried everything! its a linksys BEFW11S4 wireless B router with 4 wired ports the lights that say its connected come on and all that and the internet light comes on when i connect my dsl modem to it come on but we cant access its setup page! nothing happens when we type its ip the weird thing is, if we just put it between a computer and a modem, it will route and we will be online through it i would really like to get it working again so we can get another friend wireless access in her house can anyone help? thank you

The reset button not working would suggest that the router is shot; but, you can access the internet through it! When you "just put it between a computer and a modem" is the router assigning an IP address to the computer? If so, what is it, and what is the Gateway IP? From the sketchy information that you gave I am guessing that the router's IP address is 192.168.0.1 Terry

ok, i hooked it up like this dsl modem to router with patch cable and patch cables from router to 2 of my computers and my xp pro box says Address Type: Assigned by DHCP IP address 192.168.0.2 subnet mask 255.255.255.0 default gateway 192.168.0.1 on my parents windows 98 box the subnet mask is 255.255.255.0 ip address is 192.168.0.99 these computers are both on right now and im typing this on the xp box the routers ip address is 198.168.1.1 its a linksys when i type 192.168.1.1 in mozilla i wait 20 seconds and then a pop up says "the operation timed out when attempting to access 192.168.1.1" one problem may be that my dsl modem is an actiontec with a built-in router whose ip is 192.168.0.1 when i put 192.168.0.1 in my browser, the actiontec setup page pops up right away still, i tried earlier just having the linksys router connected to my xp machine with one patch cable and not having the modem connecteed to the linksys router and couldnt access the setup page at 192.168.1.1 if nothing else, is this thing gonna be good as a hub? we need to access the setup page so we can enable wireless on it

OK, giggles, one part of this puzzle is clear. The IPs of 192.168.0.x with mask of 255.255.255.0 and gateway of 192.168.0.1 show that the computers are getting their IP addresses assigned by the creature with IP 192.168.0.1 = the DSL modem/router. The remainder is pretty baffling! I don't know enough to guess HOW they can get IP assigned by the modem/router with your hookup, UNLESS maybe you have the modem connected to one of the LAN ports of the linksys router; make sure that the modem is connected to the linksys WAN or "modem" port. To attempt to get to the linksys home page I suggest disconnect the linksys from the modem, connect to the XP PC (as you already have it), power cycle the linksys, start or restart the XP. If the linksys is assigning IPs, the XP should get an IP 192.168.1.x and gateway 192.168.1.1 and you should be able to access the linksys. If the XP does not get a 192.168.1.x IP, assume that the linksys is not assigning IPs; set the XP to static IP=192.168.1.y, where y is 2 or 3 or 4 or something like that, Gateway and DNS = 192.168.1.1, mask = 255.255.255.0 That's gotta work. Doesn't it?

OK, i had the dsl modem+router run into the uplink port on the linksys router, i.e. not one of the 4 routed ports on it if that makes sense so yes basically, the linksys router is appearantly not doing anything i will try connnecting only my xp machine to this router and disconnect the dsl modem from it and do the static ips as you said cross fingers

ok, i just had my patch cable go into port one on the router and nothing else was plugged into this linksys piece of crap router heres what happened after i restarted the computer IP address: 169.254.17.9 subnet mask: 255.255.0.0 73 packets sent 5 recieved cant access linksys setup page at 192.168.1.1 WITH STATIC IP 192.168.1.4: subnet mask: 255.255.255.0 DNS and gateway: 192.168.1.1 connected 100mb/s 129 packets sent 19 recieved still cant access linksys setup page at 192.168.1.1 but i can ping it in cmd window in ping: 4 packets sent, 4 recieved when trying to open the setup page in mozilla, a popup says: "the connection was refused when attempting to contact 192.168.1.1" so i guess this thing isnt assigning ips anymore thanks for the help so far everyone!

I agree that your latest experiment proves that the linksys router is not assigning IP addresses automatically, and that it is (as you said all along) IP 192.168.1.1. Why it can't be accessed via browser is beyond me. Maybe somebody else can chime in now with some ideas, but my guess is that unless you can get the reset to factory defaults to work, it's time to shop for a new router. Good luck. Sorry I wasn't much help.