[brosky]

Hello geekstogo,

I've been browsing the web to find the answer to my problem, unfortunately, I haven't found one... =[ That's why I'm here. After browsing the site, it looked like a helpful, friendly place that could just have what I'm looking for.

Ok, to the story/problem... My grandparents went out of town and are paying me to house-sit their "cottage" (basically independent home) at the retirement village they live at. I have a laptop that I brought over it's an hp pavilion dv6000 that I got back in early 2008 (runs vista). They have their own computer (Dell, runs windows 7) there as well and they also have internet. Here's the interesting thing, they have an Ethernet cable that comes directly out of the wall and does not enter a modem or router. So i unplugged the cable from their computer and put it in my laptop and everything works perfectly. Recently i purchased a new gaming desktop (runs win 7) that i plan to use in college. After a few days of staying at their place using my laptop I decided that since I'm gonna be here a while i ought to bring the desktop over as well. So I brought it over but when I plug in the ethernet cable it just says unidentified network (and underneath) no internet access. Now, last year something like this happened as well. I came over to house-sit for a few weeks during the summer and at that time all i had was my laptop. Only then, it wouldn't work on my laptop until one day when i plugged it in and it magically started working (i have no clue how or why). But then when i left it wouldn't work on their computer and they ended up having an IT guy come fix their problem.

My thoughts... So I think the problem might have something to do with the Cache. The only problem is, since there's no modem or router or anything i am unable to restart it and clear the cache. I'm thinking maybe there's some way to manually clear the cache somewhere in command prompt or maybe some other way. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that it's different windows versions. Or maybe my laptop is just evil and likes to hog all the internetz.
Disclaimer: These are all just speculations from someone that has very little technical background.

If anyone is still awake after reading my wall of text, kudos. I hope my problem is clear and I hope I supplied enough background information (i also hope i didn't bog it down with too much info...). If Anyone needs clarification I will be checking in periodically and will be happy to clarify. Also, if pictures are necessary i can provide them, but i would prefer a solution that doesn't need me to post pics.

Thank you,
Brosky

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it sounds like you have a modem and/or a router that is built into the house. When newer homes are built they usually install one somewhere near the electrical panel(or in it). If the modem is using static IP addresses then hooking up a new computer may make it have not internet because the IP address has already been assigned to a certain computer. Because you were able to connect with a different computer most likely the modem is using a dynamic IP address. Which means every time you access the internet you have a different IP address from a pool of addresses the ISP provider supplies to their servers. Sometimes the modems need to be restarted because they have a IP address it has locked onto so changing computers just stops the connection(wrong computer)until the server reboots which in turn causes your modem to reboot. I would look for a way to turn off the power to the modem to see if it fixes the problem. If you still cannot get a connection, or there is no way to reset the modem, i would ask the retirement community office how the internet is setup. I have seen some retirement communities that run all internet connections directly off their own servers, thru their own modems and routers, in the community office(usually so they can charge you for overuse).

SRX660

[SRX660]

it sounds like you have a modem and/or a router that is built into the house. When newer homes are built they usually install one somewhere near the electrical panel(or in it). If the modem is using static IP addresses then hooking up a new computer may make it have not internet because the IP address has already been assigned to a certain computer. Because you were able to connect with a different computer most likely the modem is using a dynamic IP address. Which means every time you access the internet you have a different IP address from a pool of addresses the ISP provider supplies to their servers. Sometimes the modems need to be restarted because they have a IP address it has locked onto so changing computers just stops the connection(wrong computer)until the server reboots which in turn causes your modem to reboot. I would look for a way to turn off the power to the modem to see if it fixes the problem. If you still cannot get a connection, or there is no way to reset the modem, i would ask the retirement community office how the internet is setup. I have seen some retirement communities that run all internet connections directly off their own servers, thru their own modems and routers, in the community office(usually so they can charge you for overuse).

SRX660

[brosky]

SRX660,

Thanks for the reply. Yesterday when I was messing with stuff to try to clear the cache I came across something that told me to go to cmd and type this stuff.

arp -a - this showed several internet addresses as well as physical addresses. On my laptop the top one is always dynamic, but the rest are static. When i switch to my desktop all it shows are static ones.


netsh interface ip delete arpcache - Well, i tried doing this on both computers, nothing really happened because of it... Didn't really fix anything, i guess it was just deleting the local cache on my computer or something.

What I'm getting at is that your post is helpful and it kind of answered some of my curiosities about what the static and dynamic ip addresses indicate. Is there anything I can do using the ip addresses that would not involving finding and restarting this hidden modem? I ask this because the tech guy for the retirement home isn't in today and if I could I would like to start downloading content onto my new computer. If there is anything you can teach me I'm more than willing to venture more into the technical side of computing.

Thanks SRX660,
Brosky