Home network will drop connection

[ABOU]

I run a wired home network which consists of my computer downstairs and my laptop upstairs.

Both run xp.

I share the files on the pc to the laptop and watch videos and play music upstairs on the laptop but once every two days(ish) the PC disappears from the workgroup, i have to restart the pc to get it back up. im guessing this is like a security measure or something, just let me know what info you guys need

[johnwill]

Please supply the following info, exact make and models of the equipment please.

What country are you located in.
Name of your ISP (Internet Service Provider).
What is the expected Upstream/Downstream speed for your ISP Connection?
Make and exact model of the broadband modem.
Make and exact model of the router (if a separate unit).
Model numbers can usually be obtained from the label on the device.
Connection type, wired or wireless.
If wireless, encryption used, (none, WEP, WPA, or WPA2)
Make and model of your computer.
Version and patch level of Windows on all affected machines, i.e. XP-Home (or XP-Pro), SP1-SP2, Vista, etc.
The Internet Browser in use, IE, Firefox, Opera, etc.




Please give an exact description of your problem symptoms, including the exact text of any error messages.

If you're using a wireless connection, have you tried a direct connection with a cable to see if that changes the symptoms?

If there are other computers on the same network, are they experiencing the same issue, or do they function normally?




On any affected computer, I'd also like to see this:

Hold the Windows key and press R, then type CMD to open a command prompt:

Type the following commands:

PING 216.109.112.135

PING yahoo.com

NBTSTAT -n

IPCONFIG /ALL

Right click in the command window and choose Select All, then hit Enter.
Paste the results in a message here.

If you are on a machine with no network connection, use a floppy, USB disk, or a CD-RW disk to transfer a text file with the information to allow pasting it here.

[johnhook]

ABOU,

Johnwill is right - having more detailed information about your PC hardware, network hardware, IP and network settings, etc. would be most helpful in troubleshooting and resolving this issue.

Without this information, I can make a few guesses as to the cause of this problem:

1) The power-saving features on your laptop are causing a disconnection from your home LAN. When it comes back up - the NIC in the laptop is not linking back with the network - or is establishing a link by leasing a new IP address. Provided your laptop remains plugged into AC power - I would disable the hibernation and power-saving features to prevent the laptop from "dropping" off your LAN.

2) Your router is leasing IP addresses to your PCs via DHCP. This is causing the IP addresses on one or both PCs to change when the lease expires. This change is causing a lag in which the PC is advertising its computer name via NETBIOS - which would explain why the PC isn't visible on the network right away.

Given the simplicity of your 2-PC home network, I would use STATIC IP addresses (manually configured) on BOTH PCs instead of using the DHCP server in your router. If both PCs always have the same address - accessing them via Windows NETBIOS name resolution won't be an issue.

- John

[ABOU]

Just in case it affects this, my internet connection is not affected, it is just the workgroup connection that is affected.

My laptop does not have any powersaving features enabled, it runs about 12 hours a day, being turned off at night.

My computers run on static Ips and DHCP is disabled on my router.

What country are you located in. - Ireland
Name of your ISP (Internet Service Provider). Entanet
What is the expected Upstream/Downstream speed for your ISP Connection? - 8meg/512kbps
Make and exact model of the router. - Linksys WAG254G V2
Connection type, wired or wireless. - All Wired
Make and model of your computer. - PC is self built, its running a fully patched XP pro 2002 SP2.

The laptop is an Asus A600KM Running Xp Pro 2002 SP3 (fully patched)
The Internet Browser in use, IE, Firefox, Opera, etc. - Firefox


The problem - Once every few days i will start my laptop and go to network places to access my shared directory on the pc downstairs to watch a video, i find that all the shared folders from the computer are gone, when i access the workgroup the laptop is the only computer in the workgroup (and vis versa when i go to the computer downstairs)

Restarting the PC brings the workgroup back to normal, restarting the laptop does not.

I have tried chaning the workgroup and all of the computer names but to no avail. This is a 2 computer network. There are no error messages.

I do run peer guardian, from time to time it re-blocks the ip of the laptop, but i unblock it again.

I also Run NOD32 on the PC, it has filesharing enabled.

Laptop

Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]
(C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp.

C:\Documents and Settings\Jim>ping 216.109.112.135

Pinging 216.109.112.135 with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 216.109.112.135: bytes=32 time=132ms TTL=44
Reply from 216.109.112.135: bytes=32 time=235ms TTL=45
Reply from 216.109.112.135: bytes=32 time=136ms TTL=44
Reply from 216.109.112.135: bytes=32 time=294ms TTL=44

Ping statistics for 216.109.112.135:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 132ms, Maximum = 294ms, Average = 199ms

C:\Documents and Settings\Jim>ping yahoo.com

Pinging yahoo.com [216.109.112.135] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 216.109.112.135: bytes=32 time=341ms TTL=45
Reply from 216.109.112.135: bytes=32 time=300ms TTL=44
Reply from 216.109.112.135: bytes=32 time=133ms TTL=45
Reply from 216.109.112.135: bytes=32 time=132ms TTL=45

Ping statistics for 216.109.112.135:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 132ms, Maximum = 341ms, Average = 226ms

C:\Documents and Settings\Jim>NBSTAT -n
'NBSTAT' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.

C:\Documents and Settings\Jim>NBTSTAT -n

Local Area Connection:
Node IpAddress: [192.168.1.4] Scope Id: []

NetBIOS Local Name Table

Name Type Status
---------------------------------------------
A6KM_CS <00> UNIQUE Registered
NETWORK_5 <00> GROUP Registered
A6KM_CS <20> UNIQUE Registered
NETWORK_5 <1E> GROUP Registered

C:\Documents and Settings\Jim>ipconfig /all

Windows IP Configuration

Host Name . . . . . . . . . . . . : asus_a6000
Primary Dns Suffix . . . . . . . :
Node Type . . . . . . . . . . . . : Unknown
IP Routing Enabled. . . . . . . . : No
WINS Proxy Enabled. . . . . . . . : No

Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection:

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Realtek RTL8169/8110 Family Gigabit
Ethernet NIC
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-15-F2-D8-5B-36
Dhcp Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : No
IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.4
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.1
DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.1


PC

Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]
(C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp.

E:\Documents and Settings\kyle>ping 216.109.112.135

Pinging 216.109.112.135 with 32 bytes of data:

Destination host unreachable.
Destination host unreachable.
Destination host unreachable.
Destination host unreachable.

Ping statistics for 216.109.112.135:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 0, Lost = 4 (100% loss),

E:\Documents and Settings\kyle>Ping yahoo.com

Pinging yahoo.com [66.94.234.13] with 32 bytes of data:

Destination host unreachable.
Destination host unreachable.
Destination host unreachable.
Destination host unreachable.

Ping statistics for 66.94.234.13:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 0, Lost = 4 (100% loss),

E:\Documents and Settings\kyle>NBTSTAT -n

Local Area Connection:
Node IpAddress: [192.168.1.5] Scope Id: []

NetBIOS Local Name Table

Name Type Status
---------------------------------------------
PC9600 <00> UNIQUE Registered
PC9600 <20> UNIQUE Registered
NETWORK_5 <00> GROUP Registered
NETWORK_5 <1E> GROUP Registered
NETWORK_5 <1D> UNIQUE Registered
..__MSBROWSE__.<01> GROUP Registered

E:\Documents and Settings\kyle>ipconfig /all

Windows IP Configuration

Host Name . . . . . . . . . . . . : PC9600
Primary Dns Suffix . . . . . . . :
Node Type . . . . . . . . . . . . : Unknown
IP Routing Enabled. . . . . . . . : No
WINS Proxy Enabled. . . . . . . . : No

Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection:

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Realtek RTL8169/8110 Family Gigabit
Ethernet NIC
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-0D-61-1B-89-89
Dhcp Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : No
IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.5
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.1
DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.1

E:\Documents and Settings\kyle>

[johnhook]

ABOU,

The ping attempts from your PC either by IP or hostname are troublesome. The pings from your LAPTOP seem to work fine and tell me that Internet connectivity and DNS lookups are fine on your laptop - but NOT on your PC.

Try temporarily disabling both Peer Guardian and NOD32 on the PC and perform those same tests. Also check if the original problem of not being able to see workgroup shares goes away. If disabling one or both of those programs on your PC fixes this problem - then something is not configured correctly in either Peer Guardian, NOD32 or both.

There should be settings in NOD32 that allow you to open up access to IPs on your local area network, i.e. 192.168.1.0. - or you specifically open up access to the 3 IPs on your LAN (PC, Laptop & Router). Also, if you know the physical addresses of your ISP's DNS servers, try hard coding these addresses into the PC's IP settings rather than using your router's address as a DNS server.

Also look at the WINS tab under the Advanced button under your TCP/IP settings within your Local Area Network connection. How are the Netbios related settings configured? Are you using a hosts or lmhosts file?

How is your router configured? Any special settings on your router in terms of security, NATS, triggering, etc?

Have you checked the NOD32 logs to see if any security events are being logged? This could prove helpful. Sorry for so many more questions - but sometimes this is the only way to solve issues like this.

- John

[ABOU]

• I changed my settings in peer guardian now i can ping from the pc ok.
• I added the laptop Ip address to the allowed zones on NOD 32

WINS Settings:




Router Settings:

I have NAT enabled is that necessary?
I also have Firewall on, it is not filtering any components (activeX etc)
Nothing appears irregular.

[johnwill]

Where do you see NAT enabled? You do want NetBIOS over TCP/IP, if that's what you're referring to.

[ABOU]

on my router settings page it says NAT enabled.

[johnwill]

Yes, you want NAT enabled in the router.

[ABOU]

so any ideas on why my connection is dropping from the workgroup every 2-3 days?

Does windows XP not have like a lease time on connections?

[johnhook]

ABOU,

The IP address lease time is controlled by your router, not your PC. Some routers let you reserve DHCP IP addresses based on the PC's MAC address. This allows you to keep using DHCP, but permanently assign an address based on your PCs physical network address.

The other option would be to assign STATIC or manual IP addresses on your PC rather than having the PCs lease their addresses from the router.

http://www.tech-faq.com/how-do-i-set...-windows.shtml

For more information about configuring your router, go to:

www.linksys.com

- John