Thread: I need a little help please ---

Originally Posted by jaegerhund

I'm thinking something along this line as well -----but two computers, same account, same settings -- one works --one doesn't -------- I'm at the end of my knowledge as well --

Thanks James.


Justin

Very true. Well, last thing I can think of: Mac works, Windows doesn't....virus or spyware/adware Spybot search and destroy is good.

James.

Originally Posted by Quick Orange

Did you confirm that the settings are still the same? I had a situation a few months ago where (somehow) the network settings magically changed. A quick comparison between machines, one that did work and the other that didn't, easily showed that a few numbers were off. Check it out and report back

Yeah -- I know originally they were not changed --- as I'm the only one here who could do it. But I have f'd with the a little ---- so I will check for sure and report back -- sir yes sir.

Justin

Originally Posted by Jimbo

Very true. Well, last thing I can think of: Mac works, Windows doesn't....virus or spyware/adware Spybot search and destroy is good.

James.

This is a possibility also -- but I don't think it is a coincident that this has happened with the At&t changeover ---- I've read others are having similar issues. And getting help from them is a female dog for sure.


Justin

Just off the top of my head...

Windows TCP/IP suite leaves a LOT to be desired, especialy with the tweaks in SP2 (thankfully sp3 smoothes a few of them out) It addresses packets differently than UNIX and therefore router hardware (not only yours but the whole series of intertubes) reads packets differently.

Think of it as a trip to the shop to pick up some muffins, you walk out your house, down the street, into the isle and pick the muffin, take it to the counter and pay, then walk home.

whereas on windows you might leave your house, walk a mile in the wrong direction, wait for a bus, eventualy hail a taxi, get hit with a driver looking to make some money who takes you half way around the planet to get to the grocery shop, once inside you wander aimlessly for 15 mins looking, ask an employee whos just heading for his break who cant really be bothered and merely arbitrarily points... you get the picture.
If its a TCP/IP error then frankly your without a paddle unless you perform a format/ resetup or hire a man with a toiletbrush unclogging your pipes.

This could be one of the problems, another could be a clogged DNS resoloution cache. if so then hit start, then run.
Type cmd
ipconfig flushdns
And hopefully that will unclog the U-bend.

Another could be the router not forwarding ports correctly.
Some routers maintain and learn an IPtable whereby the computer most used for mail will get packets misdirected to it from another machine, this of course depends entirely on router operating systems and how they cope with packets.

There should be a page to forward ports to a machines IP
110 for POP3
25 for SMTP
143 for IMAP
80 for HTTP

Or it could be a Quality of Service misconfiguration on the router/ windows machine.
QoS is router/client based software that prioritises connections so port 80 (web surfing) takes priority over say port 6667 (IRC conectivity) or 6881 ~ 6889 (default Bittorrenting port)
This would explain why one can connect and the other has trouble (i dont use Mac's so i dont know all that much about toyboxes handle QoS throttling)
In your routers setup page should be a configuration for QoS to see what gets priority.

Ive also seen RIP causing major headaches even on small networks, especialy windows based.
Its essentialy a communication protocol between routers to help diagram a network and on paper it allows you to plug a router into an existing network and have the network dynamicaly change to incorporate it.
Sounds good in theory, in practice it does this by flooding a network with packets to detect changes (defaulted to every 30 seconds),to update every other router and essentialy slow networks to a crawl when they dont get responses or if the hop count metric goes too high, even worse it limits the size of a network to 15 hops, essentialy 15 points a packet can make between one computer and another.

Some routers have RIP enabled as default because administrators have better things to do than to actualy set stuff up properly, like write snoopy calandars for a lineprinter in fortran.
check its disabled in your routers config.

Thats about it from the insides of my cranium, im sure there are a variety of other problems that could cause this but id actualy need to research, and that would eat up on my snoopy calander fortran coding time

Originally Posted by Chroma

Just off the top of my head...

Windows TCP/IP suite leaves a LOT to be desired, especialy with the tweaks in SP2 (thankfully sp3 smoothes a few of them out) It addresses packets differently than UNIX and therefore router hardware (not only yours but the whole series of intertubes) reads packets differently.

Think of it as a trip to the shop to pick up some muffins, you walk out your house, down the street, into the isle and pick the muffin, take it to the counter and pay, then walk home.

whereas on windows you might leave your house, walk a mile in the wrong direction, wait for a bus, eventualy hail a taxi, get hit with a driver looking to make some money who takes you half way around the planet to get to the grocery shop, once inside you wander aimlessly for 15 mins looking, ask an employee whos just heading for his break who cant really be bothered and merely arbitrarily points... you get the picture.
If its a TCP/IP error then frankly your without a paddle unless you perform a format/ resetup or hire a man with a toiletbrush unclogging your pipes.

This could be one of the problems, another could be a clogged DNS resoloution cache. if so then hit start, then run.
Type cmd
ipconfig flushdns
And hopefully that will unclog the U-bend.

Another could be the router not forwarding ports correctly.
Some routers maintain and learn an IPtable whereby the computer most used for mail will get packets misdirected to it from another machine, this of course depends entirely on router operating systems and how they cope with packets.

There should be a page to forward ports to a machines IP
110 for POP3
25 for SMTP
143 for IMAP
80 for HTTP

Or it could be a Quality of Service misconfiguration on the router/ windows machine.
QoS is router/client based software that prioritises connections so port 80 (web surfing) takes priority over say port 6667 (IRC conectivity) or 6881 ~ 6889 (default Bittorrenting port)
This would explain why one can connect and the other has trouble (i dont use Mac's so i dont know all that much about toyboxes handle QoS throttling)
In your routers setup page should be a configuration for QoS to see what gets priority.

Ive also seen RIP causing major headaches even on small networks, especialy windows based.
Its essentialy a communication protocol between routers to help diagram a network and on paper it allows you to plug a router into an existing network and have the network dynamicaly change to incorporate it.
Sounds good in theory, in practice it does this by flooding a network with packets to detect changes (defaulted to every 30 seconds),to update every other router and essentialy slow networks to a crawl when they dont get responses or if the hop count metric goes too high, even worse it limits the size of a network to 15 hops, essentialy 15 points a packet can make between one computer and another.

Some routers have RIP enabled as default because administrators have better things to do than to actualy set stuff up properly, like write snoopy calandars for a lineprinter in fortran.
check its disabled in your routers config.

Thats about it from the insides of my cranium, im sure there are a variety of other problems that could cause this but id actualy need to research, and that would eat up on my snoopy calander fortran coding time

Chroma o'boy it's gonna take me a while to process all of this -- thanks for the info.

Justin

Originally Posted by Chroma

Just off the top of my head...

Windows TCP/IP suite leaves a LOT to be desired, especialy with the tweaks in SP2 (thankfully sp3 smoothes a few of them out) It addresses packets differently than UNIX and therefore router hardware (not only yours but the whole series of intertubes) reads packets differently.

Think of it as a trip to the shop to pick up some muffins, you walk out your house, down the street, into the isle and pick the muffin, take it to the counter and pay, then walk home.

whereas on windows you might leave your house, walk a mile in the wrong direction, wait for a bus, eventualy hail a taxi, get hit with a driver looking to make some money who takes you half way around the planet to get to the grocery shop, once inside you wander aimlessly for 15 mins looking, ask an employee whos just heading for his break who cant really be bothered and merely arbitrarily points... you get the picture.
If its a TCP/IP error then frankly your without a paddle unless you perform a format/ resetup or hire a man with a toiletbrush unclogging your pipes.

This could be one of the problems, another could be a clogged DNS resoloution cache. if so then hit start, then run.
Type cmd
ipconfig flushdns
And hopefully that will unclog the U-bend.

Another could be the router not forwarding ports correctly.
Some routers maintain and learn an IPtable whereby the computer most used for mail will get packets misdirected to it from another machine, this of course depends entirely on router operating systems and how they cope with packets.

There should be a page to forward ports to a machines IP
110 for POP3
25 for SMTP
143 for IMAP
80 for HTTP

Or it could be a Quality of Service misconfiguration on the router/ windows machine.
QoS is router/client based software that prioritises connections so port 80 (web surfing) takes priority over say port 6667 (IRC conectivity) or 6881 ~ 6889 (default Bittorrenting port)
This would explain why one can connect and the other has trouble (i dont use Mac's so i dont know all that much about toyboxes handle QoS throttling)
In your routers setup page should be a configuration for QoS to see what gets priority.

Ive also seen RIP causing major headaches even on small networks, especialy windows based.
Its essentialy a communication protocol between routers to help diagram a network and on paper it allows you to plug a router into an existing network and have the network dynamicaly change to incorporate it.
Sounds good in theory, in practice it does this by flooding a network with packets to detect changes (defaulted to every 30 seconds),to update every other router and essentialy slow networks to a crawl when they dont get responses or if the hop count metric goes too high, even worse it limits the size of a network to 15 hops, essentialy 15 points a packet can make between one computer and another.

Some routers have RIP enabled as default because administrators have better things to do than to actualy set stuff up properly, like write snoopy calandars for a lineprinter in fortran.
check its disabled in your routers config.

Thats about it from the insides of my cranium, im sure there are a variety of other problems that could cause this but id actualy need to research, and that would eat up on my snoopy calander fortran coding time

That was gonna be my next suggestion

James.

Hey, me too

That would've been my advice for sure...if I knew anything about computers.

(putting on a very dusty Tier II Support manager's hat)

In no specific order.....

1. Did both machines' email ever work concurrently on the router?
2. Is Thunderbird open on both machines simultaneously?
3. Is he trying to access POP or IMAP Gmail via Thunderbird? If he is trying to access ATT email, have you checked the settings for ATT? They may have changed it from pop.bellsouth.com for example to pop.att.com (if the Mac is working, I doubt this is the problem, but worth a look).
4. Have you uninstalled Thunderbird on the Dell and done a clean install, using the config instructions from GMail?
5. Is the behavior the same with the Mac disconnected from the network?
6. Does the Dell get to the Internet?
7. As mentioned, try flushing the DNS cache.
8. Try having XP "repair" the Ethernet connection: right-click on the little PC icon down in the toolbar (near the clock,etc.) This will execute several commands related to the connectivity, releasing and renewing the IP, etc.

As for Macs vs. PC handling of data, Macs handle things like Unix (Mac OS is Unix-based....thus the lack of overhead versus Windows), so the Mac may connect while the PC will not.
9. Have you tried laying a rosary on the CPU?

Originally Posted by Chroma

Just off the top of my head...

Windows TCP/IP suite leaves a LOT to be desired, especialy with the tweaks in SP2 (thankfully sp3 smoothes a few of them out) It addresses packets differently than UNIX and therefore router hardware (not only yours but the whole series of intertubes) reads packets differently.

Oh, man, I'm finally beginning to understand what all this stuff about Windows administration is all about! All I can say is the majority of people like to use M3 as well...
I'm glad I know better on both counts
Although the history of the free market related to shaving paints a pretty dire future as far as computers go...