Possible NIC problems?

[Boone]

Hello all,

This is my first time posting to this forum so be patient. A friend of mine is on his third Sony Viao because of an unusual problem. The first one had some monitor issues but that's another post. When I did swap out the first Viao with his old computer it had no problem hooking up to AT&T Broadband through his Motorola SB4200 cable modem. I was able to renew his IP address and surf the web with no problem. The computer found the connection all by itself. Unfortunately Wal-Mart had him bring the whole PC back because of some monitor problems.

When I set up the second PC, I could not get an internet connection. The configuration software that came from AT&T was unable to fix things. Windows can identify the default gateway, DHCP server, DNS servers and looks like it always obtains one certain IP address on the network but I was unable to renew the IP address or surf the net.

After tech support had me jump through a few hoops like resetting the modem, uninstalling and reinstalling the NIC they declared that it was a hardware problem with the NIC. Now we've taken that PC back and replaced it and we're still having the same problem.

All of the connection configuration options are the same as the ones on my computer (I have the same ISP). Any ideas?

[reboot]

What is the IP the computer gets?
If it's 169.xxx.xxx.xxx, then you do have some big problems, and you need to manually reset the TCP/IP stack.
If it's a normal IP, then it could just be that his ISP doesn't know that it's his computer (MAC address based IP), and he'll have to call the ISP.

[Boone]

It gets a normal IP address that appears to be good for the ISP but the lease on the address is only for an hour and you can't surf with it. When you try to renew it using the repair connection function I get an error saying that the IP address couldn't be renewed.

Our ISP does use MAC address based IPs but they use the MAC address from the cable modem.

Boone

[glc]

Your ISP also uses the MAC address of the NIC card - in addition to the modem MAC. Call them and give them the MAC of the (new) NIC.

[Boone]

When I talked to the support guy at my ISP, I told him about the new PC but he wasn't interested in a new MAC for the NIC when I tried to give it to him. Also, the first Viao PC worked fine. Thinking back, when I first set up the service for my friend AT&T only wanted the MAC for the modem. I'll give them another call and hopefully I'll get someone else. If the problem was something as simple as them needing to enter the new MAC for the NIC I'm really going to be disappointed in their technical support. Thanks.

[Boone]

Thanks again glc. After talking to two different techs at the ISP they finally got things straight. These guys must just be reading stuff off a screen with no understanding of what they are really doing.