So a lady I work with is having a very strange connectivity issue.
The beast is a HP DV9000 still running Vista (don't go there)
Wireless takes a long time to connect (it actually pops up a box saying "This is taking longer than normal to connect") then connects "with limited connectivity" It will show a connection, but no packets will move, nothing will come up in a web browser.
A similar thing happens with a wired connection, plug in the ethernet and the lights on the port come on, the NIC properties show connected, but no data moves.
These issues led me to think it must be a firewall issue. The PC has Windows defender (disabled, but installed) and AVG in use. I'd shut down and disable the AVG too, but it still wouldn't work.
To make sure it wasn't a still-running background process firewall running I even booted into Safe Mode with Networking, tried both wired and wireless and still nothing.
Hardware Manager shows no driver issues for either wired or wireless.
The entire process has been repeated on three different wireless networks and two wired networks to no avail.
SO - the nitty gritty questions - is this a Southbridge failure?
If it was Southbrige, would a USB wireless adapter work?
Should I swap HDD and run a Linux distro to rule out a Windows issue?
I don't have the laptop with me now, but will get it back to test any theories you can give me.
The beast is a HP DV9000 still running Vista (don't go there)
Wireless takes a long time to connect (it actually pops up a box saying "This is taking longer than normal to connect") then connects "with limited connectivity" It will show a connection, but no packets will move, nothing will come up in a web browser.
A similar thing happens with a wired connection, plug in the ethernet and the lights on the port come on, the NIC properties show connected, but no data moves.
These issues led me to think it must be a firewall issue. The PC has Windows defender (disabled, but installed) and AVG in use. I'd shut down and disable the AVG too, but it still wouldn't work.
To make sure it wasn't a still-running background process firewall running I even booted into Safe Mode with Networking, tried both wired and wireless and still nothing.
Hardware Manager shows no driver issues for either wired or wireless.
The entire process has been repeated on three different wireless networks and two wired networks to no avail.
SO - the nitty gritty questions - is this a Southbridge failure?
If it was Southbrige, would a USB wireless adapter work?
Should I swap HDD and run a Linux distro to rule out a Windows issue?
I don't have the laptop with me now, but will get it back to test any theories you can give me.