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Recently, I bought a new Lenovo Desktop with Vista pre-installed. I'd heard all the negative comments about Vista, but I decided to go ahead and give it a try anyway....what a mistake! It has proven to be impossible to get a stable internet connection regardless of whether I connect wirelessly or with an ethernet cable, nor can i get it to recognize or be recognized by the other computers on my network..

Not being a quitter though, I thought I'd see if anyone here was up for some troubleshooting before I wiped the drive and installed the copy of XP Home that I've already purchased.

I appreciate the help but this is not a simple situation, I have some knowledge of networking and I have already tried all the obvious things as well as some not so obvious ones, so I need some EXPERT help.

Thanks in advance.

tune

Whilst I'm not the expert I think you need to define more clearly when you say:

"It has proven to be impossible to get a stable internet connection"

It works intermittently?
You have connected to, say, Google? and then you can't? 5 minutes, 10 minutes?

the problem is intermittent. It is nearly impossible to connect using the LAN (ethernet cable). To be specific: When the ethernet cable is plugged in I'll get a message in the network and sharing center that I have Local Access only; after much rebooting of the computer and router, I may actually get an ip address, but I'll be bounced off the internet within minutes.

When I connect using a wireless connection (linksys wireless usb-n network adapter to be specific) I can usually get an internet connection only after much switching back and forth between the two available wireless networks in my home. But even in this case, my connection is very unstable and will not last for more than a half-hour or so.

FYI: I have several other computers hooked up both directly (with an ethernet cable) and wirelessly (i.e., laptops), running Windows XP home and Mac OS X. I don't have a problem with any of these computers, just the darn VISTA machine.

Any suggestions?

tune

Ok - Let's stick with the hard wire connection as it should have less problems.

From your reply I'm assuming you mean the connection to the router & the IP address drops so you never get to Google?

Anyway turn off the "modem router" & the PC. Turn on (reboot) the router then the PC.

On the PC hit the Windows button on the bottom left and in that bottom left space type "cmd" (without the ") (enter). In the Dos window that appears type:
IPCONFIG

Post back the results.....

OK, here's he result:

Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection:

Connection-specific DNS Suffix: home
IPv4 Address: 192.198.1.5
Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway: 192.168.1.1

As before I cannot get onto the internet.

Big apologies - should have been

ipconfig /all

after that:

whilst you're in that Dos window could you type

ping "www.bbc.co.uk"

without the apostrophes

and report back that result as well

Ok, I'm attaching a screenshot of the DOS window as a word file (there was too much to type)>

By the way, I 've been thinking about this problem and I'm guessing my problem has to do with the fact that I am "piggybacking" a second router on my primary modem/router. What seems to be happening is that my Vista computer for some reason is "seeing" the secondary router instead of the primary one, but in order to get the second router to work as a wireless "booster" my tech disabled the LAN capability on it. Hence, when Vista connects to the secondary router, there is no LAN capability.

So the question is, how do I get Vista to see the primary router instead (I think the problem is compounded by the fact that they both have the same ip address, i.e., 192.168.1.1)