Followup — One Computer Will Talk to the Router But Other Two Computers Won't Talk to the Router

In last week's online newsletter, I wrote about James Biddle's problem where one of his computers will talk to his router, but his other two computers won't talk to the router.

I also invited other readers to offer suggestions by emailing me or by posting their suggestions on my blog, and a number of them did...

Reader Carver Smith suggested:

I have seen certain types of router all of a sudden take a dislike to pulling an address from the ISP modem, although probably not a problem here as one is working, but maybe try to set the ethernet card in the computer to 10 megabits instead of 100 or full. A lot of negotiation goes on when starting up.

Reader Jimmy Towner suggested

With regards to the router. I had similar problems with my network and after a lot of trial and error, i dug into the router settings and turned off DHCP. Assigned addresses for each computer to use in the router. then manually assigned each computer an address to connect to the internet. Worked for me as there are no conflicts between computers as they each have their own address.

Reader Tim suggested

In regards to James Biddle and his router issue. I would try these steps:
1) One by one connect the computers to the same port on the router that the XP machine that can connect uses.
2) Uninstall reinstall the network drivers on the 2 machines not working.
3) Look in the various router settings, ip address table, to see if the router sees all 3 computers.
4) Look for firmware updates for the router.

Reader Marc suggested

Hey Terry,

On the James Biddle router issue; just a thought:

Assuming the “non-working” computers are getting valid IP addresses, I would look at the “working” computer as a possible cause of the trouble. It could be claiming 99% of the pipe which would “seem” like the others had no connectivity.

Copyright © 2009 Terry A. Stockdale. All rights reserved.