Thinkpads Forum

Hi, all. I'm having trouble with a T-23 getting it connected to my cable internet service via the Ethernet connection. I have the T-23 and a Toshiba notebook sitting side-by-side and I'm doing this while on the Toshiba. I can move the cable back and forth and the connection is good on the Toshiba and doesn't connect on the T-23. I have re-formatted and re-installed everthing on the T-23 with a new hard drive and I'm running XP Pro (upgrade from the original Win2000 factory configuration, which I've done before with no problems).
Here's what I've run down so far:
The Intel Pro/100E VE Network card shows to be enabled and working properly in Device Manager. I did uninstall the driver and let it re-install. Stil working in Device Manager, still no connection.
When I right-click the Network Icon, it show a 100mb connection, but it's sending packets and not receiving any.
When I enter the ipconfig command in the command window (according to the troubleshooter), it says "media diabled". If so, I can't see anywhere to enable it.
I installed Zonalarm, but I've turned it off as well as the Windows firewall.
The one thing I'm about to try is to connect the cable to the T-23 and re-start the cable modem. What confuses me there is that I can re-connect the cable , back to the Toshiba and the connection starts right up.

I was wondering about an authentication issue, but I connected the Toshiba to the modem right out of the box (after installing Zonalarm Pro, of course) and it connected right away.

Thanx for any ideas..
Geri O

Okay, then, so it's 2 minutes later. I moved the Ethernet cable to the T-23, powered down the modem, powered the modem back up and now it's connected. Boy, do I feel like a nimrod. Nowhere in my search for info even in the XP help files said anything about re-starting the modem. Now we (okay, I) know. Thanx anyway and take care....

Geri O

NIC (Network Interface Card) drivers installed, device enabled (network connections), TCP/IP etc protocols enabled (properties of that connection, under network connections on XP)?
You can try pinging, does it work? If it does, then atleast your NIC is working.
Just in case, do you use a switch? Perhaps reset its MAC address table by removing the power for a while or press some magic-button :).
I've once had a true brainbuster (:P), and it was related to switch somehow not passing on most of the packets that came from the router-computer, then I just added a router between and it worked, probably some IPaddress->MAC issue.

You can always try capturing packets, let's say Ethereal, to see if anything really moves.

Edit: Just saw you fixed the prob, I'll just leave my suggestions for the upcoming generation of network troubleshooters :)

Geri wrote:Okay, then, so it's 2 minutes later. I moved the Ethernet cable to the T-23, powered down the modem, powered the modem back up and now it's connected. Boy, do I feel like a nimrod. Nowhere in my search for info even in the XP help files said anything about re-starting the modem. Now we (okay, I) know. Thanx anyway and take care....

Geri O

XP help files do not say anything about it because it is not really an XP issue.

Short answer: The cable modem had already assigned an address to your Toshiba's NIC. The ThinkPad needed a new address from the cable modem. A lot of modems will not assign a new address until they are powered down.

To get around shutting down the modem every time you need to connect a new computer you could get a nice router.

Since it is a software/network issue i suppose that belonged over in the software section..

Moderator: Give me time! I just got up!

Just got up?? Hell, I had to hit the ground at 5:30 AM to, well, work on this..))

Kidding, of course, I was in bed for almost 12 hours Friday after an 8-day gig of providing sound re-inforcement for a rodeo... 16-17-hour days, too! Oh, yea, that's when the hard drive in the T-23 died, leaving me no control over the speaker processors...

I was not sure if this was a hardware issue, software issue or what. Too bad you don't have a dumbass issue section, I'd have to homestead in there...

Thanx for all the help anyway, I'm gonna try the router idea.

Take care, all

You could perhaps try and modify the MAC address of the NIC that's being sent out, so you don't have to power down the modem all the time, I'm not sure if it works thought.
Use such programs as Macshift etc to do that inside Windows.