Bizarre home network issue

[d000hg]

I now have a Belkin router/ADSL modem. The setup is that I have two PCS (Win2000 & WinXP) plugged into it as well as my PS2.

The issue is that while the PS2 and WinXP are quite happy, the Win2K is not. We've tried many different configurations - DHCP on/off, different gateways and DNS, etc, but the best we can get is:
WinXP can ping the router, can access the internet, running nslookup on www.google.com finds an IP address which can be pinged.
Win2K can ping the router, can't access the internet, nslookup fails but we can ping some IP addresses like the ones found for google on the WinXP machine.

Since both PCs can see the router it is surely either some setting in the router, or on the PC that has problems? But we re-setup the router with no special settings for either PC, and I disabled my software firewall on Win2K.

I believe I'm going to end up wiping my Win2K box and starting again maybe with WinXP but in the meantime is there anything obvious? I think not since a friend who works with networks spent 2 hours over the phone with us yesterday and couldn't resolve it!

I should add that on rare occaisons the Win2K PC CAN access the web, but seemingly at random!

[rik]

Can the 2k box access the internet if you bypass the router?

[phishhead]

have you tried giving the win2k a static IP. and use the routers IP as a gateway. oh and dont forget the dns ips.

[Dehcbad25]

I would set up the same IP as the XP machine but with 10 extra numbers in the IP, so for example
XP machine settings are:
IP Address: 192.168.1.101
Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0
Gateway: 192.168.1.1
DNS: 192.168.1.1

Then use for the Windows 2K:
IP Address: 192.168.1.111
Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0
Gateway: 192.168.1.1
DNS: 192.168.1.1

If that works, it just a problem of receiving DNS (it has happened sometimes to me), if it doesn't, you might have problems with your sockets, most likely due to spyware.
Have you tried from the command prompt to do ipconfig /release and then ipconfig /renew?
Check this article if there is a problem renewing IP address
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/817571/

[d000hg]

Can the 2k box access the internet if you bypass the router?On a separate ADSL modem, yes.

[d000hg]

have you tried giving the win2k a static IP. and use the routers IP as a gateway. oh and dont forget the dns ips.Yep, that sounds like one we tried. Using DNS as publicised by our ISP.

[d000hg]

I would set up the same IP as the XP machine but with 10 extra numbers in the IP, so for example
XP machine settings are:
IP Address: 192.168.1.101
Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0
Gateway: 192.168.1.1
DNS: 192.168.1.1

Then use for the Windows 2K:
IP Address: 192.168.1.111
Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0
Gateway: 192.168.1.1
DNS: 192.168.1.1

If that works, it just a problem of receiving DNS (it has happened sometimes to me), if it doesn't, you might have problems with your sockets, most likely due to spyware.
Have you tried from the command prompt to do ipconfig /release and then ipconfig /renew?
Check this article if there is a problem renewing IP address
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/817571/This does raise the issue - should DNS (& alternate DNS) be the router or what your ISP says? On the XP machine either seems to work!

You raise a point about spyware; I've had problems on the 2K PC with spyware in the past. How might this be causing problems? Could someone else confirm that this is a possible/likely cause to the problems before I act on it...?

[Curio]

You have a DNS problem. Set the DNS on the 2k machine manually to whichever DNS you like (BT - 194.72.6.57, 194.72.9.34, 194.74.65.68) and it should work. You can check dns at a command prompt using NSLOOKUP and if you put in two arguments like NSLOOKUP www.bbc.co.uk 194.72.6.57 it uses the second argument as the DNS server. You will probably find that using DNS other than the router works OK but if you cannot work DNS at all even with manual configuration TCP/IP might need re-installing.

And yes spyware commonly hijacks DNS so it can point you the wrong way.

[Dehcbad25]

I had to repair several PCs where the wisocks were corrupted thanks to spyware. The article posted gives instructions to fix winsocls and re-install TCP/IP.
About which DNS to use, have one of the working PCs get IP using DHCP and that should tell you. Linksys usually use the router's IP for DNS on the clients (192.168.1.1). I had one (out of 3) that assigned the ISP's DNS directly.