The receptionist was out the first couple of days this week. Some of the other office staff were filling in and I think they may have inadvertantly done something to the computer to make it NOT work but I can't figure out what. The machine is a Compaq Presario. Newer machine. About two months old. Running WinME and IE5.?. Connected to DSL with a router. Automatically assigned IP. It does have McAfee FireWall installed (I didn't do it) but it is configured to let everything pass. The other people in the office SEEMED to remember that the internet didn't work on Monday but they aren't SURE. On Wednesday the receptionist got back and said it does NOT work. She THINKS she remembers seeing an "AOL: you must configure your service" screen but it went away. We have thoughts that someone else clicked on one of those stupid 'here are links to too many service providers you are not going to use but they are installed on EVERY machine anyway' folders and may have gone into the start of installing of AOL. I don't care about that too much. At least I don't think it is spyware. I just want to get the connection working again. I tried the cat5 cable from the router to the machine with a laptop. It works fine. I even put a HUB on the end of the cable to make sure that there wasn't some sort of wire loose in the cable and it was connecting when I had the laptop connected but not when it was plugged in to the box. The laptop worked fine plugged into the hub but the other computer didn't. I tried swapping out the network card. It responds the same way with a new network card. I put the other network card back in. I un-installed ALL the networking protocols and adapters and even dial up networking. Re-install. No change. The Link light on the network card lights up when the cable is plugged in. It always has. I think I have narrowed it down to the machine. Software. I tried creating a dial-up networking connection. It dials and does the handshaking and says it is connected but it won't communicate with the browser. I know there may be just ONE little box that I haven't checked to make this thing work again. Does anyone have any ideas what it might be?? jer...

Try system restore!!!! :) dial up networking is for a dial up account. is this machine connected to a phone line? is any machine on the network connected to a phone line (not the DSL line). Ive seen this before with a small win2k network where an employee attempted to add there dial up account to the network, the machine was able to log on to the internet via dial up but the browser would not work. security? i really dont know. should be able to use the internet connection wizard to reconfigure the machine for dsl.

Unless.... Whomever you are talking about actually installed AOL. My take on this is 1 of 2 things is going on: 1)Someone messed with your DSL settings... or installing something else messed with these settings. If this is the case, call your ISP and make sure everything is set up correctly. or... 2)AOL was "accidently" installed on this machine. AOL's software alters the system winsock keys to fit it's own needs. Sometimes, this will cause the symptoms you are describing (able to dial and get a connection, but cannot browse). If, after you call your ISP and make sure that all the settings are correct for your DSL connection, you still can't browse the internet... have a look at this Microsoft Knowledgebase article: "The Page Cannot Be Displayed" Error Message After You Upgrade to Windows Millennium Edition ... Skip the first part of the RESOLUTION and start at #2. This fixes almost every problem I've ever seen with AOL causing "Page cannot be displayed".

1) How do you configure your router. I have a linksys router at home and it works fine on ports 1,2,4,5, but for some reason not 3. So you could try a different port. 2) Make sure your tcp/ip settings are set so all the boxes are grayed out. For instance, use DHCP. 3) Start, Settings, Control Panel, Internet Options OR Open IE, then tools, then options. Select the connections tab, then setup the LAN. 4) Has anyone erased anything off the harddrive recently? This is a long shot but part of the BIOS on Compaqs are actually on the hard drive instead of the motherboard, dont ask. 5) I think your best shot might be system restore and then connecting, this will probably work. Just go to my computer, c:, windows, system, restore, and then restore the computer to where it was working fine.

YES. YES. That newfangled, elusive system restore. I heard of it before but I have done very little with anything besides Win9x. Just wasn't in the bag of tricks to think of. The restore system did the trick. The last good checkpoint was May 30 but It worked to restore the connections. We will never know for sure what happened to cause it but it is fixed. Thanks. jer...