I don't want to turn this blog into a technical support forum but I would appreciate people forwarding a link to this post to anyone with good IT knowledge because this has me stumped.
I have a Netgear 632 router but it intermittantly either locks up or drops internet connection and requires physically turning off and on. So I bought a Netgear 834 router, configured it identically and connected it. Everything worked fine initially, then I noticed one computer had frozen. After much troubleshooting I confirmed the following. The computer only locked after login, between 30 seconds and a couple of minutes after. Its totally frozen with the clock stopped. Switch back to the 632 and no locking up. Next I tried a Cisco x2000 router and exactly the same problem. As the Cisco had wireless I disconnected the network cable and connected wirelessly. Same problem! I have several XP computers on the network and they are all fine. All routers are configured identically as DHCP servers. The computer in question is running service pack 3 and works perfectly when the Netgear 632 is used. Could it be a tcpip driver or stack issue; do all network connections, wired and wireless share the same driver? Why would it work with one router but not others? At least the fact that wireless networking is also affected rules out any physical causes such as cables, switches etc.
So, any ideas?
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7 comments:
I managed to find someone who had a similar problem to the one you have (albeit with a different router):-
http://www.geek.com/forums/topic/computer-freezes-upon-acquiring-network-address
Basically it came down to the stock firmware that was used in the router. Though they were unable to establish WHY the stock FW was causing an issue they circumvented the problem by using 'open' firmware.
I've looked at the 834 and it is possible to load open FW, see here:-
https://gna.org/projects/opendg
While this may work, it is likely to be a work-around and will not tell you WHAT the problem is.
Given your background, I rather suspect you'd like to understand the actual cause of the problem so this may not be a suitable option anyway.
If you don't want to go down the open route you could always try updating to a different version of the stock firmware (if you haven't already).
HTH.
...of course I am not sure why the router FW should cause this issue but you never know.
Here is an updated link for OpenWRT 834 FW:-
http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/netgear/dg834.g/b
Cheers.
Steve, I don't understand a word, but my husband says this... Anna P
Not much, but one thing to check would be to see if he is using “dynamic IP address assignments” or whether he is using “fixed IPs” for each computer. For info, the IP address needs to be unique for each machine attaching to the router, otherwise you get an “IP conflict” which can cause issues. We get this occasionally but it does not lock up computers (we use dynamic assignment) but we have Vista; maybe with XP it causes a crash. Would happen when a machine is started and added to the network. Maybe on the existing router the IP address assignment is all snug, while on the new ones there is an assignment issue.
Just a thought.
Not sure that they'll be able to add anything, but I will run this past the it people we are using now just in case they can help. I will let you know.
Cheers
It is possible for certain network components not to work well together although rare these days. I would look to see if I could find a newer network driver for the PC in question. one thing you could do is to download a LIVE Linux CD (such as UBUNTU) which will allow you to boot into Linux without altering the XP installation on the hard drive. Given the Linux drivers will probably be newer than the XP ones this will allow you to see if you can connect to the internet (Firefox browser all built in to the live CD) and stay connected without the PC locking up. I suspect this would work OK and hence point back to the NIC in that PC or the driver for it. Not really answering the why but this is what I would do to troubleshoot the problem if it was one of my PCs at work.
Cheers, Dave (mate of Ray K)
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