Network Connection Established But No Internet access

Brotuulaan

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Apr 30, 2013
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I returned home from an internship a few weeks ago, and I found that my father finally got high-speed internet. He's had dial-up since I was a kid, so any time I visited from school I counted on having no internet access unless I went in to the local library. It's now a dish setup, running to a local tower not a satellite. It was great being able to actually use email and watch Netflix, but then he asked me to help him get one of his computers on wi-fi with a USB adapter. That's when the problem came.

It let us connect to the network, but there was no internet access. The signal was only two out of five bars, but the connection quality was up in the 90%s. After working with it for hours last Saturday, I decided to call the local computer guy who sold my father the refurbished computer and the adapter (he owns the local Radio Shack). I called on Monday and he said he had no clue what the problem could be, so he couldn't help. I called the company that manufactured the adapter, and in my time with the tech on the phone, he said that it sounds like the device was working properly and that there should be an internet connection. He asked whether I had pinged another computer, which I hadn't. I did afterwards, and it came back just fine.

Before returning the adapter, my father decided to install it on another XP that was then plugged straight into the router. It worked fine, so there were no problems there. It installed and worked on the wireless just fine. Then I had him bring the computer over to the router to plug it straight in. The same thing happened here that happened with the adapter: this computer connected to the network just fine, pinging other computers, even, but refused to use the LAN for an internet connection. It keeps saying that the browser is offline and needs to connect, but the only connections it presents as options are via dial-up.

So this other XP works via cable and the adapter, a Jellybean Android tablet works via wireless, and my own windows 8.1 works via wireless. This is extremely frustrating, it defies everything I know about networking, and it has sucked a number of hours out of my time this past week. Please, if anyone has any ideas, please notify me. I am getting married in a few weeks, and then I will be traveling from one state to another four times in the next month, so this does not need to be on my mind -- but I don't want my dad to be stuck with the other XP as his only option because it is extremely slow and crappy.
 
Yeah, tried that. There's already a LAN 2 connection, so it said that it should be set up correctly. I suppose I could delete it and just make another one. Still, it was over a separate connection with the Wi-Fi and doing the same thing. I'll try it out in the meantime, so keep the suggestions coming!
 
Make sure you have a compatible adapter for your wireless router. I discovered the hard way that certain N-Routers, while they claim to be backwards compatible, have difficulty working with dated antennas.
For best results, I would recommend matching the antenna to the router's fastest bandwidth class (B, G, N, AC etc.)

EDIT: Would help if I fully read your posts....looks like the adapter works on other computers? In that case it is definitely a problem with the computer itself...or a compatibility problem with the driver on that machine for the USB adapter...have you tried removing all internet drivers and reinstalling from scratch or using windows defaults? I know its a pain but worth a shot.
 
Another thing to check would be the firewall on the machine. If the firewall is blocking all outside connections then it would allow for connections to other devices on your internal network but would prevent connections to the World Wide Web/Internet.
 
Yes, it works on another computer. It is a b/g/n adapter, as is the router.

When you say "Internet drivers," do you mean the drivers for the USB device itself, the Ethernet adapter drivers, or other drivers? Remember that the same problem happened on the two separate systems. I believe it is a problem with the computer at large rather than an individual component. I could be wrong, of course, but that would indicate problems with two pieces of hardware.

 
Your other post came in while I was replying.

I tried turning the firewall completely off after checking the settings multiple times, and even with the firewall completely off, there was no internet connection on either the USB adapter or the Ethernet connection.
 


This may sound basic but I'm trying to make sure all the bases are covered here.....
Have you run a virus sweep on this machine?
Also doing a repair install of the OS might help.....a repair install would keep the applications and data safe but rewrite all the files pertaining to the OS...which may have some corruption.
The drivers I was referring to are the drivers specific to your motherboard pertaining to the NIC/Network Card (embedded or otherwise) AND for the USB adapter.
 
Ok, so I've got a new set of problems. I had already uninstalled and reinstalled the drivers for the wireless adapter, and before I tried to reinstall or roll back the network card drivers, it struck me that I should try a different web browser. I downloaded Firefox on my own computer and moved it over via USB. After installing it on my dad's computer, I found that the problem was never with the OS but with Internet Explorer itself. For some reason, it was tied up in trying to use the phone line for dial-up only -- it refused to recognize the LAN as a usable source for the internet. FF did it just fine, so I decided I would uninstall IE.

When I went to the folder where IE was installed, there was no uninstall file. Next I opened up the Control Panel so I could remove the program through Windows. While the application was in the list, there was no button to remove it when highlighted. So here I am with no way to uninstall IE. I decided to download an installer and run it over the current installation. I would probably have left it alone, but I don't know how many updates the computer needs to be finished (it has SP3, so it's at least that far along).

Hang-up, hang-up, and another hang-up, and I finally got it installed and rebooted. IE still won't connect except through a dial-up connection. Without IE, I can't check for updates from Microsoft's update page. To make things worse, now when the computer is on, the CPU takes off and the fan starts racing. With that, obviously it's extremely difficult to do anything because of the lag caused by a CPU running at 100%. There was no trouble with the CPU like this before.

Any ideas why IE isn't working, and any clue why the CPU is going nuts?
 
I figured out where the problem is coming from, but I still don't know how to stop it. The source of the CPU drain is an svchost.exe process. It seems to be tied to Windows Firewall/Internet Connection Sharing. If I stop the process, it messes with the network controls and turns off the firewall and the security center. When I try to restart the ICS process, it says that access is denied. I'm guessing this is because it requires the svchost.exe to be running as well, except that I stopped it (?).

This process not only begins when I open a web browser, but it begins when the computer boots up. The process starts sucking system resources after boot-up even before login (multiple users on this particular computer).

Of all the suggestions I found, they either deal with HP drivers (the computer is but there is no HP all-in-one printer on the network), doing windows updates, or just reducing the system resources allotted and therefore used (I'm guessing) while letting the source problem continue. As you know already, I cannot run windows update because IE was not working. The reinstall/update that I did failed to change anything, and I can't even start IE because there is still no .exe file in the IE folder! It's all a big pile of ridiculous crap!

Perhaps I should start a new thread for this because of the major change in direction?
 
So you think it was windows update? If that's so, shouldn't there be a notification in the system tray? It also started before any login, and I've never seen windows update initiate before a login.
 
UPDATE:

I have a job out in AR now (my parents live in IL), so I can't actually look at the computer myself anymore. I talked with my brother today, who told me that my dad had taken it back into the shop where he got it originally (it was refurbished, so we have no installation discs). My brother told me that one of the times they talked to the guy who owns the shop, he said to try turning off some of the startup processes.

My brother turned off Windows Installer, and that stopped the CPU from blasting out of the computer chassis. Then they tried to update flash player and the computer completely wigged out. I think he said that it froze, or something, and they had to turn Windows Installer back on in order to get it to do anything at all with the update (makes sense). When they turned it back on, the computer has its cycle of CPU spikes based on what you do. It sometimes will take off like a jet engine by itself, but usually it goes crazy when you're doing anything that would normally kick up the CPU -- except that it doesn't really come down for a long time. It never did that before all this networking crap started.

My brother also said that he checked the updates, and it looks like it's trying to install SP3 a couple times a week (which makes no sense since it's already running SP3...)

I asked him to go to the update page on M$'s website and see what it says is needed, and found a few extra links to fix-its on their site as well. I'll try to remember to update this when I hear back from them again.