Installing new router on friend's PC

[Luriden]

My friend got a laptop so I thought I'd donate an old Linksys WRT54G wireless router to him. He originally had a Linksys wired router. I had DD-WRT on my wireless one, but I wiped it out and put the official Linksys firmware on there. Works fine on my PC. I wiped out all the settings and took it to his house.

I switched out the routers at his place, and his computer recognizes the router, I can access the router's webpage, but can't go to any websites. Bringing up the network connections in XP shows he's connected without a problem, but the internet gateway is disabled. I tried enabling it and it says "Connection failed!" with no other info. Choosing repair says it's fixed but it's not. There's no error messages displayed other than "Connection failed!" when trying to enable the internet gateway.

I tried using the router setup included on the enclosed disc, and it says I have to set up his connection manually. I entered all the correct info and still nothing. His old router didn't require me to set up anything manually though, it was all automatic.

Anything obvious that I'm forgetting to do? Of course I've done many power cycles on both the modem and router, as well as held the router's reset button for 30 seconds to clear settings and retry. It puts off wireless signal but his laptop can't connect, which is fine for now since I can't even go anywhere with a wired connection as of now.

[Ex-Cyber]

It sounds like his Windows install is set up for "Internet Connection Sharing". You probably need to disable that; try uninstalling and reinstalling the connection in Network Connections, and choose "this computer connects directly to the Internet" (or words to that effect) in the connection wizard.

[Luriden]

It sounds like his Windows install is set up for "Internet Connection Sharing". You probably need to disable that; try uninstalling and reinstalling the connection in Network Connections, and choose "this computer connects directly to the Internet" (or words to that effect) in the connection wizard.

That makes sense somewhat. He does use internet sharing to stream music/videos to his Xbox. I don't get why the other router worked though and why I have to change settings to make this one work. I'm also afraid to fuck too much of the shit up in case I change something and his old router starts having the same problem, so if I go reinstalling the connection I want to make sure it fixes it.

[Ex-Cyber]

You might be able to just disable the existing one and add a new connection, but I'm not sure whether Windows allows that on a single hardware NIC.

[BlackAura]

Why is his machine running ICS? That's not needed if you actually have a router - you can just connect all of your machines to the router, and they should all get internet access. Chances are his existing box probably isn't a router - it's probably a modem (or a router configured to act as a modem), and the PC may be set to handle the PPPoE or PPPoA connection itself, with ICS installed to make the PC act as a router.

It might be a good idea to check that. Check the properties on all the network connections, and see if any of them are set to be shared. If they are, that's probably the problem. Given that you're installing a real router, you absolutely do not need ICS, so you might as well turn it off. You can always turn it back on.

If you have a broadband internet connection somewhere in the list of network connections, that probably means the old router is, in fact, a modem. It probably won't hurt to leave that in place, but you shouldn't need it. The router should connect to the internet, not the PC.

If that's not it, then you basically need to work out what's wrong before you can work out how to fix it. The network troubleshooting stuff in Windows tends to be worse than worthless, in my experience, unless you're using a typical setup circa 2001 (dial-up, basically), so the best way is to do it manually.

First, you should check the router's configuration webpage. Make sure that it's actually connected to the internet. Usually, this involves giving it a username and password, and possibly a few other settings. If it can't connect to the internet, that's probably the problem.

Check the network configuration on the PC. If the WRT54G is configured like a normal router, you'll need an IP address on the same network as the router (usually 192.168.0.x or 192.168.1.x), a matching netmask (usually 255.255.255.0), and the default gateway and primary DNS should both point to the router's IP address. Setting everything to automatic should take care of this for you. Manual configuration is usually only needed for servers, or if you have something like ICS running.

If you use automatic configuration, you can check the settings it's actually using from a Command Prompt:

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ipconfig

Next up, check that the local network works (it should, if you can access the router, but it doesn't hurt to check). Pinging the router's IP address is the easiest way. From a Command Prompt window, type something like this:

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ping 192.168.0.1

It should indicate that it's receiving replies. If that doesn't work, your network setup (IP address or netmask, most likely) is wrong.

Next, try looking up a DNS entry.

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nslookup www.google.com

If that doesn't work, there are a few possible problems. First of all, you might not be connected to the internet at all. Second, the router's DNS server might not be working - it might not be configured to use the ISP's DNS servers, for example. Third, the PC's DNS settings might be wrong.

If that all works, try pinging something on the internet:

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ping www.google.com

If that doesn't work, then the default gateway address is probably wrong, or the internet connection isn't working properly.

[Luriden]

I don't think he has internet connection sharing turned on, I confused that for file sharing which is what I thought Ex-Cyber meant. File sharing is turned on but everything connected through his old router. I'm sure it was a router since I'm the one that gave it to him, his modem used to plug straight into the computer until I modded his Xbox and donated my old Linksys wired router to him and set it up myself.

With the wired router plugged in and internet working, I see the adapter in network connections as a LAN, nothing is listed as an internet connection. Though when I plug the wireless one in, it shows the same thing plus an actual internet connection.

I tried entering everything in manually with the WRT54G that I saw on ipconfig with the wired router plugged in and had the same problem.

I never thought about the computer seeing the router as a modem. I'm not sure how to go about telling it otherwise though. I don't have access to his computer right now but I'm almost certain pinging it wouldn't work. Though I can access the router's webpage, it can't access any outside websites.

Don't know about the DNS settings. Like I said before though, I tried entering them in manually based on what the auto lookup settings on the wired were using and it wasn't working.

I'm wanting to lean more towards the computer wanting to do something else with the router besides having it act as a router. My main concern is how the router setup was forcing me to enter everything in manually when I shouldn't have to. Hell, we use the same internet provider and I set up his old router, everything was automatic, I didn't have to do much of anything besides plug the router in and run the setup utility included with the router. All of the TCP/IP options are set to auto.

I do know however that the router webpage doesn't see any IP addresses. Everything is set to 0.0.0.0 on the router's page. Not sure if that means anything besides what I already know, which is that the internet connection is non existent at this point.

[Dilbert]

did you try just resetting it to use the default settings?

[Dilbert]

ignore that, I didn't read your post carefully. I've definitely had trouble with this exact same router....I'm using it right now in fact, but I can't get a wireless connection to work with my laptop. Orignally i bought a USB adapter with it that seemed to solve the problem, but that got stolen and I don't have another 40 bucks to shell out