Hey Gandolf. I hope your well.

OK, I took the laptop to the computer shop today and we all had some good laughs. My basic Thai and their basic English seemed to communicate all that we needed. They said that they don't know Vista well and they were all dying laughing when I showed them that it was in Japanese. The guy that used to work there and was the guy that set up our printers(and network? maybe) has moved and doesn't work there now...

Anyways, they are coming out to our school tomorrow anyways to return a scanner/printer that they sent out to be fixed. They said that they'd take a look at the laptop there while it's plugged into the network. I have a feeling that they won't be much of a help. Perhaps the ISP people would be more helpful. This satellite that we have has been here since I arrived and I've never seen any worker from that company at our school. But they must have been the ones to install the sat and get the IPStar modem up and going. How easy it is to get them out to school I don't know- if they're anything like the cable company back in Chicago it might be weeks...

I then went to a Thai computer worker/friend and he suggested just installing XP. What do you think about that? And just to be sure that the XP option isn't too easy, we don't have the driver disk for the laptop. Being a Japanese bought laptop(Toshiba Dynabook) it seems tough to track down the driver downloads.

Thanks

Sounds like you had a fun day.

There is nothing wrong with your computer or Vista. In my opinion, it's network setting(s) that is/are causing the problem.

Satellite people usually stop when they reach the end of their satellite cable. I wouldn't hold by breath where they are concerned.

I don't think changing to XP will help if they don't know how to set up XP to work with your school's network.

If connectivity to the internet is the only reason for connecting the Vista PC to the school's network, why not connect the Vista PC to its own modem and Broadband connection? Can you afford a seperate Broadband ISP account? You already know the Vista PC will work via a public connection.

If that is not an option, the only real alternative in my mind is to try to set up the Vista PC for a Private network, because I think the school's network is setup as a private network. That would include reenabling the DHCP Broadcast Flag.

What do you think?

That makes sense. I'm not too optimistic about the meeting at school this morning or the sat company helping out. We'll see.

But wouldn't the fact that all PCs before this one running XP were able to plug in and get the internet point to the network settings of Vista conflicting with the local network settings?

I was all about switching to XP yesterday but your post makes me think again. I'm late to get out there, so we'll let you know what happens.

Thanks again!

I don't know what the guy did but its working!! He played around with the device properties, disabled firewall security, then suddenly it was up and going.

If you don't mind I'm going to ask for your help as we try to enable the firewall and get the security up again. This Japanese is tough to work with so if I send screen shots could you help out??

Thanks for all of your help with our laptop internet drama!

I would be interested to know what he do, but I am happy that your Vista PC is now communicating with your school's network.

I'll help all I can, but I still do not read Japanese.

You are correct in wanting the Firewall back up. However, to be on the save side, please document anything that you change as you change it. And, reboot after each change so that if the PC stops working with the network or in any other way you will know it and can reverse whatever you just changed. Some changes or affects of the change do not take affect until after you reboot. Remember the path to any change is important to document as well. If a change goes bad, you need to know how to get back to that place so you can reverse the change.

I hope that makes sense to you and thanks for keeping me in the loop.

Since this particular problem is fixed, I suggest you post a new thread for a new problem.

This problem has its own thread. ie http://www.pchelpforum.com/windows-v...tml#post272284
You can always paste this URL in a new thread to provide background information to the new problem if you want.

Sorry to have not put this up earlier but this issue is resolved!

thanks again Gandolf!

Wow! That is some serious "stick-to-it-tiveness"! Good job!

I'll get this marked as FIXED.

Hope to see you around the forum.