"Customer" net connection issues?

[mikehende]

What do you Techs do when a "customer" has net connection issues?

1] Shouldn't this be a job for both them and their ISP provider to work out?

2] Reason I'm looking into this is because a friend of mine has been having "intermittent" connection issues so I told him the first best thing would be for him to bring his pc over to my house and leave it for a few days so I can know if it's something on his end and not the pc itself, would this be the way you would handle this or not? If not, what would you do?

[dbarrow]

Mike, I believe there are some older posts in this section where we have gone through many of the details on troubleshooting an intermittent connection problem.

Rule out computer
Rule out router
Rule out modem
Rule out line/connection problem
Fight with ISP

Testing it out on your end may be productive if you have a good connection.
Have him bring along all the other items and work your way up.

It only took me a month to work up to swapping out my router ....

[mikehende]

Well, yeah Doug, I myself had created a thread for a similar issue a friend was facing "at his place", the purpose of this thread is to find out which is better, to go to someone's house to fix their connectivity problem or FIRST have them bring the pc to your house which has a known good working connection? My thinking is to bring the pc and try it out on my connection, if no problems at my home then I go through the motions at his place.

Glad you brought this up though becuase I had planned on creating a separate thread for "notes" when going on an outside job, will do so now. Anyone can still feel free to say if they would bring the pc home first or fix on location?

[dbarrow]

Testing with a "known good" and similar ie: cable connection would save a lot of time pinpointing if the problem is outside the box.

The difficulty is just how intermittent is the problem?
Will it show up within a day or so or will it require a week to make it happen?

As I mentioned, I spent the better part of a month chasing a very intermittent router problem with no way to force or induce the problem.
When it finally PO'd me enough, I swapped the router as I had a second and identical model sitting in the closet.
But for that, I would not have been in a rush to run out and buy a new one just to see if swapping parts cured it.

If he does not want to leave the machine with you, give him a list of items to check when the problem surfaces, pings, reboot modem, reboot router, speed tests and other online checks, etc. Have him narrow down possibilities.

For cable, always worth a phone call to Tech Support and have them send out a tech for a service call to make sure the problem is not in the tap, lines, splitters, or modem.
I have been very impressed with Comcast service techs over the last couple years.

[mikehende]

This notebook [Gericom] comes with a Phone Modem and not an Ethernet so I tried connecting directly to our phone line but it doesn't connect to net, normally when I connect anyone's pc via ethernet to my router, it connects to the net, any ideas what's going on here?

[kelly]

Sounds like it doesn't have an Ethernet connection; it has phone (dial-up) only. Must be an older notebook. Look back at the thread you started asking how many ways to connect to the Internet.

If the owner has a dialup account, like AOL or whatever, and they live near you, you can use that account to connect to the Internet via your phone line.

[mikehende]

Another issue. Was working on this pc, the owner uses AOL, I have verizon Yahoo, I connected to the net here at my home via a wireless pcm card but could only access the net using AOL Explorer and not IE, why is this?

[kelly]

That's pretty strange. So the Internet connection works as witness by use of AOL's explorer. However IE can't access the Internet. Have you tried to download/install Firefox to see what that does? It may help to get another data point. Also, can you update the AV and anti-spam applications?

Have you tried turning off the firewall to see if that's blocking IE from getting Internet access?

[mikehende]

Unfortunately the person took it back last night, she only brought it to me to see if it can connect to the net, it was working fine at her house all along until it stopped going to the net all of a sudden. Yes, I had checked the firewall which was already off, next time I will try Firefox, thanks.

[mikehende]

Another issue, this HP desktop cannot connect to the net when I plug into it. Looking in Device Manager, I see the Ethernet Controller has the yellow sign, I try to update the driver but there isn't any software installed for this it seems, what should I do here please?

[kelly]

First thing is to uninstall the Ethernet driver and restart the machine. The machine should find the Ethernet controller and reload the driver.

If that doesn't work - find out what Ethernet controller is in the machine. If it's not obvious form the Device Manager, try a tool like Belarc Advisor or AIDA32. They will give you a listing of the hardware and software in the machine.

Once you determine the make/model of the Ethernet controller, go to the manufacturer's site and download the proper driver and install it.

If that doesn't work, you may have a hardware problem and have to replace/install a new network card.

[mikehende]

used AIDA32 to find the name of the controller which is Broadcom integrated ethernet, went to HP's site to find the driver, found it here

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport...OID=1093#11395

ran the driver but looks like windows can't find it no matter what I do, when I run the hardware wizard and choose the location where the driver is installed using the "Browse for folder" window and I select the folder, the "OK" tab is shaded out so I can't get any further, any ideas?

[kelly]

When you ran the driver, what happened? Is it one of those self-extracting archives that you run and then it creates a folder. In that folder is the actual installation application?

[mikehende]

yes, it created a folder named swsetup

[mikehende]

Got it now, seems I had to run the setup exe from within the created folder.

[mikehende]

Got the Graphics done too but I am having problems getting the correct driver for the audio, can anyone help please? Seems like whichever driver I download from Intel's site for this is not working, this is exactly what's written when I use Aida32

intel 82801 db[M]-ac'97 audio controller [B-O]

help?

[mikehende]

Alright, got it, pc is complete now, thanks!

[mikehende]

Took my personal pc over to a friend's house yesterday and could not connect to the net but even though I use a wireless connection here at home, the pc's integrated network card would always connect to the net anytime I used an RJ45 to connect directly to the router. When I looked in Device Manager, the Ethernet controller had the yellow exclamation mark on it so I downloaded and installed the drivers for it but what I'd like to know is why this happened, anyone?