Networking troubles solved
Since about a week after Daughter Number One got her laptop computer I’ve been swearing at it.
It came with Windows Vista. All of the other machines I am responsible for troubleshooting run Windows XP, except for the one which still runs Windows 98. These machines have been co-existing on our wireless network for months with no problems.
Every time Daughter Number One comes home from college and connects her Vista machine to the network, it takes about five minutes before all internet access is impossible.
I was looking frantically for a solution to this problem (really wanting to find one before she comes home for the summer and that machine becomes a permanent fixture on this network) when I posted a description of the problem at a place called www.techsupportforum.com.
Some kind soul actually decided that this might really be happening and not just a story I made up to get attention and he asked me to run a couple of commands from Daughter Number One’s command prompt and show him the results. His comment upon seeing those results was
Something is very wrong with that laptop!
He then proceeded to give me step-by-step instructions on what to change to make her laptop act more normal.
After following his instructions, her laptop has been connected to our network for a couple of hours and my browser still cruises along nicely.
I went back to the forum where the advice came from with the intention of thanking my benefactor, but, wouldn’t you know it, FireFox can’t find the server at that address.
It must have been my bad luck rubbing off on them.
Sorry, guys.
