How do I connect new Win XP install to LAN with Ethernet cable?

[dwillard]

Last year I upgraded to AT&T U-verse DSL and the AT&T installation tech connected my two home office computers to the residential gateway (2Wire 3800HGV-B) using Ethernet cables.

Now I have just installed Windows XP x64 SP2 on a new laptop and have been trying to connect it to the Internet using an Ethernet cable to the same 2Wire gateway. I have gone thru the steps outlined in Internet Explorer and Network Connections to go online, but cannot get a connection.

What am I overlooking?

Your insight would be much appreciated.

Thanks.

Digby

 

[gbhall]

I am not expert on network gateways, but I think you should check you have the correct IP address on the laptop. It should either be assigned automatically by a domain controller, or may need to be a permanent fixed address in a range allowed by the gateway. All this would be arranged by your network manager, but something hints to me that could be you !!

Other things you should check are - is the network card or motherboard ethernet network working at all ? All ethernet IP connections need a windows driver for the hardware and unfortunately XP 64 was never ever properly supported by both MS and hardware manufactureres and was soon abandoned comnpletely.

open system control panel, select system and click the hardware tab then the device manager button. On the 'network adapters' line, are there any red or yellow flags? If so, you probably need to find and install the correct XP 64 ethernet driver.

If all seems well, discover the network address of the router and ping it. This means open a command box and type

ping 192.168.0.1

which is a very common gateway address. It will ping the network four times and either tell you no connection, or give you a round trip time of zero (too small to measure).

 

[dwillard]

GBHall,

Thanks for your insight.

I have made progress in the past few hours after a few days of spinning my wheels.

Though it required raising my level of expertise a notch or so, I managed to cross-reference info from the Win XP 32-bit installation on the same laptop to figure out what hardware is on the computer, then go directly to Intel and get the WiFi x64-bit program and drivers for my Win XP x64-bit installation.

This worked for me --- at long-last! --- and my WiFi connection is now downloading MS Windows updates to the computer.


I'm still working on the Ethernet connection, though I think that most likely I will get the proper Ethernet downloads from either Windows Updates or MS Updates. If not, however, I followed a similar approach as I did with the WiFi and have what I think are the correct Ethernet drivers from Broadcom as my backup plan.

Take care.

Digby

 

[gbhall]

Thanks for the update. For your future info, finding the exact hardware description of any PC is really easy. You just download any of several free utilities designed to do just that, such as in this one of our forums https://www.techspot.com/downloadid11by4.html

There are so many ! Try everest, belarc advisor and SIV are all very popular.

 

[dwillard]

Thanks much. This is terrific info!

Thanks for the update. For your future info, finding the exact hardware description of any PC is really easy. You just download any of several free utilities designed to do just that, such as in this one of our forums https://www.techspot.com/downloadid11by4.html

There are so many ! Try everest, belarc advisor and SIV are all very popular.

I much appreciate the URL to the techspot system tools page. I have both bookmarked the page in my main computer, and saved the e-mail message with the URL for future reference.

Digby