Windows 7: IP Address Conflict: Maybe It's the Modem!

I had been wrestling for days with a home networking problem.  The problem was that either of my two computers could go online, by itself, when I would connect it to the DSL modem directly or through a network switch; but when I would plug them both into a network switch or router, neither would go online or connect with each other.  Plugging both in at the same time would quickly produce an error message:

Network Error

Windows has detected an IP address conflict

Another computer on this network has the same IP address as this computer.

Most recently, I had explored the possibility that the problem was with a corrupted Windows 7 installation on computer A.  I had reinstalled Win7 on computer A with a brand-new installation; but as soon as I connected it to the switch, both computers were once again unable to go online.

I didn't want to go through the Win7 setup process again, so I replaced that new installation with one that I had made a day or two after the initial installation.  Eventually, computer A, with this day-old installation, did give me the Network Error message.  Interestingly, though, computer B did not.  It was now able to stay connected, through the switch, while computer A was failing to connect.

I had a laptop, running Vista.  It had been a while since I had tried to connect it to this wired network.  I connected it directly to the modem.  It was able to go online that way.  I connected it to the switch while computer B (but not computer A) was connected.  The laptop reported an IP address conflict.  This suggested that the problem was with computer B.  To test that, I removed computer B from the switch and plugged in computer A and the laptop.  But no, those two had a conflict as well.  Finally, I plugged in the laptop and a Windows XP computer.  Those two had an IP address conflict as well.  So it was not some kind of flaw with Win7.

This brought me back to a problem that I had considered previously.  I had seen, somewhere, an indication that the DSL modem was responsible for assigning IP addresses.  I had followed up on this partway:  I had called AT&T, and they had told me that, as long as a direct connection between the computer and the modem was successful, they could not provide me with any further free assistance.  I had had the option of paying for assistance, and at this point it seemed I should have taken that option, because now I was thinking that the modem was failing to assign IP addresses.  Well, but OK, now that it was diagnosed, I wondered if I could fix it myself.

I had bought this modem from AT&T about two and a half years earlier.  My previous notes on it did not detail the setup process.  I think maybe AT&T took care of that for me.  I had moved to another place; the modem had spent some time on a shelf.  But now it was back.  I looked on the bottom.  Nothing there specified a model number, but I guessed that's what the number 2210-02-1022 was.  It said it was "Style MSTATEA."  Motorola didn't seem to know anything about it.  At first, there didn't seem to be a user's guide, but then I figured out a search that got me somewhere.  The manual that I found said there was a web-based configuration page, which I could find at http://192.168.1.254/.  I went there.  It showed me a basic Connection Information and Modem Information and Local Network screen.  Here, I saw that the modem's model number was 2210-02 and I was using software version 7.7.5r8.

At the left side of that screen, I clicked on Login.  It said, "You are currently connected to the Internet."  I went into Advanced > Connection Configuration.  It asked for the Modem Access Code printed on the bottom of the modem.  Apparently this was secret information, so I decided not to type it in this post.  I entered the code.  Evidently I didn't need the login information I had gotten from the manual.  The manual said the default username was "admin" and the password was something that I created on the spot.  It already had the login information for my AT&T account there.  I remembered that a tech support guy had instructed me to set PPPoE as the protocol; that was still there.  The manual (page 9) said,

Your Modem serves Dynamically-assigned IP addresses by default.  Be sure to configure each computer connected to your Modem to accept a Dynamically-assigned IP address, commonly referred to as DHCP.

The instructions, translated into Win7 terms, essentially had me go into Control Panel > Network and Sharing Center > Change adapter properties > Local Area Connection > Properties > TCP/IPv4 > Properties > Advanced.  There, it looked like DHCP was set already, as the manual said.  Trying something else, I went into the router's Advanced > PPP Location option.  It said, "PPP is on the modem."  I had an alternative:

PPP is on the computer, gateway or router. This should only be used if you need to run a PPPoE client on your PC or you use another device (e.g., gateway or router) to initiate a PPPoE session. This is often referred to as "Bridged" mode.

I tried that.  The router's internal webpage gave me these further instructions:

PPP Location Warning

PRINT OR RECORD THIS INFORMATION NOW

When using Bridged mode, your access to the modem becomes limited. To return to the DSL modem user interface after this change you need to directly connect your PC to the modem without any gateway or router between the modem and the PC, and configure your computer appropriately.

Configure the IP address of your computer to be on the same network as the modem by using an IP address of the form 192.168.1.x (except 192.168.1.254) and a network mask of 255.255.255.0.

You may also return to the DSL modem user interface by resetting the modem back to its initial defaults. All configuration changes and other settings will no longer be available if this is done. To reset the modem press the "Reset" button located on the back of the modem.

Modem Restarting

The modem can be used after the power light has been steady green for at least 15 seconds.

That approach might have worked if I had still been using my router, but I wasn't.  I was using a network switch, and it wasn't playing ball.  Apparently switches weren't capable of doing the bridge thing.  I reset the modem (didn't have to connect directly; a switch was apparently like a straightpipe for that purpose).  Now, in the modem's Connection Information screen, I got back an Internet IP Address and Internet Gateway Address after a few seconds.  Now that I had gotten over my panic and saw that I could rescue the situation, I actually read the instructions and saw that I hadn't tried the part about configuring the computer's IP address to be 192.168.1.x.  So I went back and did it all again, and this time I did that part too, back in the same location as above ( Control Panel > Network and Sharing Center > Change adapter properties > Local Area Connection > Properties > TCP/IPv4 > Properties.  There, I replaced the automatic settings with the numbers shown above.  Still didn't work.  Windows Network Diagnostics started up automatically.  After a minute or two, it said it couldn't identify the problem.  So I guessed that maybe I had it right the first time, that I needed a router instead of a switch.  But that didn't make any sense.  I had used this switch with this modem before.

So, alright, the joke was on me.  I had to pay AT&T to make the same switch work with the same modem, where they had worked without a problem before.  In the meantime, while I was on hold, I tried to set the modem back the way I found it, but now I wasn't able to connect.  So that was good.  AT&T would have to help me with that.  I could get some more free service out of them before I had to pay them.  And I did.  The guy was very helpful at getting me back to where I started.  It took an hour.  Then he passed me on to AT&T's paid service (877-831-2880).  The phone there rang and rang.  Evidently AT&T wasn't so eager to take my money.  No canned voice giving me information on what number I had reached, or anything.  But at least no hold while listening to godawful music specially selected to discourage people from calling AT&T free tech support.  After ringing for several minutes, I hung up and tried that number again.  This time I did get a canned voice.  So apparently he put me through to the wrong number.  This, he said, was ConnectCheck.  It allowed me to choose tech support.  It rang and rang.  So maybe he was right after all.  He said they would be there until, oops, maybe the wrong time zone.  Friday night, too late, probably would have to wait until Monday.  AT&T, I love you!

So let us review.  How did the guy get me back to working order?  I think we mostly just did ordinary things.  He had me reboot into Win7's Safe Mode with Networking and see if I could browse.  I could.  So he thought maybe the problem there was with antivirus software.  We didn't pursue that back in Normal Mode, though.  He had me do hard reset on the modem, and then log into the modem's webpage, but I think we just looked at information there.  He really had no idea what a switch was; it took him a while to wrap his head around the concept.  Ultimately, he and his managers concluded that the IP Address Conflict error had to be coming either from a bad switch or from bad drivers.  Did I need drivers for the switch?  It was a Netgear FS605 v3.  Well, there was an installation guide.  A manual!  RTFM!  Fortunateliy, there was no installation process or software.  Just plug it in, which I had done.  So how about his other theory:  a bad switch?  Anything was possible, but what had happened on my system -- recurrently, it would seem -- that would have wiped out, first, my router, and then my switch?  Was AT&T sending out electromagnetic pulses to drum up customers for its paid support line?  I could get a replacement for $25 including tax at Sears, or a few bucks cheaper online if I didn't need it right away.

While I was talking to the guy, I plugged in my Vista laptop again.  It came up with a different error message than before.  In addition to the one about an IP conflict, it gave me an option to "Automatically get new IP settings for the network adapter "Local Area Connection."  It also advised turning off the modem or router and unplugging its power cord and then replugging after 10 seconds.  I tried the automatic solution first.  That immediately disappeared after I tried it.  It offered an option to "Reset the network adapter "Local Area Connection,'" so I tried that next.  That failed too, so I went on to unplug the modem, and simultaneously did likewise with the switch, and then replugged them sequentially, waiting for the modem to show solid green on four out of five lights before replugging the switch.  Most of these were steps that I had tried many times before at this point.  They didn't make any difference.

At this point in the game, pending paid support from AT&T which wouldn't materialize until Monday (this was Friday night), I decided that the modem was not the problem.  But what was?  That question called for a new post in this continuing saga.

AT&T, Phone Home

Summary

Today, I spent 3.5 hours altogether, trying to communicate with AT&T about my bill. My previous calls and online communications had produced no results.

This time, as I discovered, I had to get through to an account specialist before anything would happen. Whatever the lower-level people told me was irrelevant. They were there essentially to tell me to pay some arbitrary amount and forget about the original promotion I had signed up for.

Tech support had no clue as to what I was seeing on my screen, or why. Their emulator did not reflect what was actually happening onscreen.

In my conversations with about 15-20 people at AT&T this morning, I found there were good people and also some cynical people. The latter would put me on hold and not come back, or would give me false information.

I am still not able to log into my account online, and am not able to contact AT&T by their "Contact Us" button, so I will still have to spend hours if I need to get information about my account, or corrections to it, in the future.

AT&T was the only option for service in my neighborhood. I hated to sign up with them, because I had experienced terrible customer service several years earlier with SBC, which was what AT&T was called previously. Unless I wind up in some future situation in which AT&T is the only option, I do not plan to ever have another account with them.

The following is the message in which I logged the details:

* * * * *

Dear AT&T:

This morning, I attempted to contact you through att.net. This failed, for reasons I will describe shortly. I then called you at the AT&T Internet Services number specified on my bill (877-722-3755). When I tried to get through to a human voice, that call was terminated.

I tried again and spoke with a call center staffer. He got my account number wrong twice, but eventually we got past that. Next, he insisted upon being given my cell phone number. I was unwilling to give him that number, mostly because I did not want to get into an extended conversation at a dime a minute. I finally stated it was 222-222-2222. I then asked for similar information in return, specifically, an AT&T email address to which I could send a description of the problem I was having when I tried to get through to you at att.net. He was unable to give me an email address. I know AT&T is a communication company; but this, I have to say, did not seem very communicative.

I asked to speak to his supervisor. The supervisor gave me the address to which I am sending this message: scam@abuse-att.net. This is obviously an odd address for customer service, so I have a feeling I will be forwarding this message on again. But possibly I can just post it on my blog and get it to you that way.

I then asked the supervisor if we could proceed to the issue that had prompted me to try to contact you through att.net, namely, the status of my bill. You had incorrectly set up two different accounts in my name at the same time, when I installed service here a few months ago, so I had had to call in and request that you straighten out my account. That took a couple of tries. The most recent one was several weeks ago. I have not received a corrected bill, so I was calling, now, to see whether that had been taken care of.

The supervisor informed me that, unfortunately, the number I had reached was technical assistance, and that he would have to transfer me to another number to take care of the bill. After carefully and kindly verifying that I was located in Indiana, he immediately forwarded me to your Texas office, where a very nice man named Gilbert verified my location and told me that he would not be able to help me and that I would have to call your Indiana office at 888-274-9056.

None of this was really very surprising, by the way. I had been an SBC customer several years ago, before the change of name to AT&T, and I had had to go through much the same kind of thing on repeated occasions. In a sense, it was reassuring to see that, for purposes of customer service, it was still a bad idea to break up the real AT&T, all those years ago. Service was very good, way back then.

But to continue. I was just trying to find out the status of my bill, and we were closing in on it: I did reach Linda at 888-274-9056, after a hold of only five minutes. She said AT&T has no customer service email address. She said my account has been blocked, and perhaps that's why I cannot get online, though that was actually not the problem; the website was simply malfunctioning, before we even got to the point of entering my account number. She did find it strange that your records were showing my account as still being active, despite being blocked. I have to confess, I was glad that it was still active, despite being blocked, because I was speaking with Linda on Skype, which would not have been possible if your accounting system had been functioning properly.

After a moment of digging around, Linda discovered that the credits had been issued weeks ago, in response to my previous call, but as she put it, they had not "flowed over" to actually be applied to my bill. Apparently the previous guy had not properly "disputed" the charges (her word). She said they would post $120 in credits to the bill that would be coming to me in a week or two. Linda was an agreeable individual. She put me on hold while she verified with your Payments department that they would actually sort out my account. She said I might have a "restoral" fee of $25; if so, she said, I would have to call back again to dispute that. Altogether, the process of contacting you about my bill took about an hour.

Linda said that, if I wanted an email address for tech support, she would have to refer my phone call to tech support, and maybe they could give me one. I did have the address shown above, but by this point I was seriously doubting it, so I went with Linda on this. The number she referred me to was the one on my bill, under the "Billing Summary" heading; evidently this was not actually a billing phone number. The technician said that he would attempt to find an email address for tech support. He was not able to do so.

So we went through things the slow, painful way. It took another two hours. I didn't know it would take that long, else I wouldn't have bothered. But it's probably just as well that I did. I was afraid that, next time you screwed up my bill, you might fail to screw up the process of cutting off my service -- that is, you might actually succeed in shutting me down in the middle of a project -- so I thought I had probably better do my best to get access to my account through the webpage. Ideally, this would actually spare me from having to spend more hours at this, sometime in the future.

First off, I showed the technician that the "Contact Us" link on your main webpage was not functioning. I don't know how long it's been like that. Let me summarize this: the AT&T webpage for the world was not accepting attempts at contact, and I had to be the one to point it out. This cannot be a great comment on your webpage designers. I say that because, if they had done their job properly, I would have had two extra hours this morning to do more constructive things with, and I'm sure lots of other people have been in the same position.

Then we tried to get me registered, so that I could actually look at my account online. This brought a whole new spectrum of difficulties. Example: my account number begins with a zero. But when I tried to enter that number on the registration page, I got an error message indicating that an account number cannot begin with a zero. The technician and I went through this several times, from different angles. I was trying on two different computers, so it seemed that this, again, must have been a problem that many AT&T users have run into. So instead of processing those customers efficiently through your website, your inaccessibility has forced them to route these problems through your call center, or simply not bother trying to register online.

The technician said that, ordinarily, AT&T sends a registration code by snail mail. I told him that I hadn't received anything like that. After he checked a bunch of things and put me on hold a bunch of times, the conclusion we reached was that he had to transfer me back to the billing department, albeit at a different number (800-288-2020). The lady there was talking kind of fast, but she referred to my account number (beginning with a zero) as a "dry-lube" account. I don't think "lube" was actually the word she used, but it was vaguely something like that. Link, maybe. Anyway, she had to transfer me back to Indiana after all, and that took only another couple of minutes. The hold music, in this case, was steel drums. I like Jamaican, but this was not a very good selection. But at least I was becoming more attuned to such matters, as I gradually settled into my new life role as an AT&T customer on hold.

The billing technician took me through the same steps as I had just gone through with the tech support guy, and after about ten minutes, we wound up back at the same error message, informing me that I could not request a registration code because an account number cannot have a zero as its first digit. The billing guy got back in touch with tech support because, as he said, "It shouldn't do that, at all." I thought he was putting me on hold, but then it turned out I was being forwarded back to tech support again. So it was, like, goodbye to the billing guy.

Somewhere along the way, I realized that I was actually providing a valuable public service, in that I was helping AT&T troubleshoot its webpage. And this was exactly why I had signed up with AT&T again, after those previous experiences. Well, that and the fact that there didn't seem to be any other high-speed service in this particular town, though I must admit I was getting curious about whether maybe I should have looked harder for an alternative.

By the way, I found that I had sufficient time to write all this out in detail, once I decided that the email address (above) was almost surely a joke at my expense, and that I would therefore have to be posting this on my blog. So, in the spirit of my blog posts generally, at a certain point in this process, I tried to log the steps in the process more carefully than I had done at the outset of this message.

This time around, at tech support, I got a lady with a sense of humor. I mean, I think I amused her, because it sounded like she was sort of laughing at me. I realized, after a moment, that possibly she thought I was an idiot because I was going through the steps so slowly, so I sped it up a bit, and started to check in with her at each step. I had learned, along the way, that AT&T tech support uses an emulator to give them a rough idea of what the screen is actually like for the customer, so probably she just found it humorous that someone would think she was not familiar with the webpages she had to go through a million times every day. I sympathized with her for that, and I had to admit that my problem, again, was not with her, so much as with the web programmers who had not constructed the emulator to emulate accurately.

Anyway, she did seem to understand what I was saying, once I took her through it step by step, and she seemed to be taking me more seriously now, so I guess that was progress. But then I wasn't sure that she actually had understood the situation after all, because, once again, she took me through the same steps that, I swear, I had gone through at least 15 times by this point. Then she put me on hold and ...

... and, unfortunately, at that point, AT&T did finally get its act together and cut off my service. The Skype call died.  Note to self:  if it works, don't fix it.  They may have been threatening to cut off my service because I refused to pay the wrong amounts, but they weren't actually able to figure out how to do that until I contacted them.

So now I really did have to start racking up cell phone minutes. I called the billing department and got a man who was so -- and I'm sorry to say this, but he was just really a decidedly unintelligent individual, to the point that I was ashamed of myself for expecting on-the-ball performance from someone who did not appear to have that capability. I don't mean that snidely. I know people with disabilities. I honestly mean that this guy seemed to have a disability that impaired his ability to perform what I thought was his job. I wasn't expecting that, and ... well, anyway, so when he really wasn't getting what I was saying, eventually I asked to speak to his supervisor. But he didn't want to transfer me to his supervisor. When I insisted several times, he put me on hold, and after a while of that, I hung up and called back. This time, I got a woman who explained very clearly the wrong promotion, one that I hadn't signed up for. After she was finished with her presentation, I asked to speak to her supervisor. She told me that, instead, I should speak to a specialist. I was willing to try that, so she forwarded me to someone who was, actually, not a specialist, and after going through the same song and dance again, she forwarded me to another person who did sound like a real specialist.

That call lasted another 32 minutes. By the end, the woman had taken my credit card number, had sorted out the correct amount that I should be billed for, and had forwarded to her supervisor a request that I be put back online as soon as possible. That was at 12:25 PM. I had started this process at about 8:50 AM. Twenty minutes later, I was back online. But since there was still no online access to my account, I would have to go back through something like this process again, next time I wanted to sort out something related to my account.

AT&T DSL Installation

I decided to try using AT&T's DSL as my Internet service provider (ISP). Based on what the AT&T representative said, it sounded like I would want their Pro service, at $30 per month, for a connection speed of "up to" 3.0 Mbps, if I wanted speed comparable to cable. There was also the Elite service, for $35, for a 6.0 Mbps connection. Less expensively, AT&T offered Basic ($20) and Express ($25) services, with connection speeds of "up to" 768 Kbps and 1.5 Mbps, respectively. She said I could change at any time, with just a phone call, so I decided to see what the Express service would give me for $25 per month. (For reference purposes, that 1.5 Mbps service, at 7 AM on a weekday, looked like it would give me a 700MB Ubuntu ISO download in about 105 minutes, when I was not doing heavy browsing or otherwise taxing my machine, for an average of about 6.7MB per minute, or about 110KB per second. I say it "looked like" it would do that, because in fact it did not complete the job. After a half-dozen abortive tries, I gave up and went over to the university with its very fast connection, where I downloaded the same ISO in about five minutes.) The representative didn't tell me that I could get the $50 modem or $80 gateway for free if I ordered Pro or Elite service online. I would have done my shopping online, but unfortunately I could not go online -- not at home, anyway. At this writing, I was thinking I probably should call AT&T and suggest that their introductory recording should notify callers that they will get a better deal by ordering online -- which I would have done, at a public computer if necessary. When I called to follow up on my order, the automated voice system for DSL service (877-722-3755) told me that my service was to be installed by 8 PM. But 8 PM came and went and there were no fireworks, no bells ringing, no amazing flashing lights on the Internet switch that I had been using to connect two computers to the single incoming line in my previous Ethernet-wired building. I called their voice response system again and got the same recording as before. This time, I insisted on speaking to someone, and that got me through to a nice woman -- in India, I guessed, from her accent. She walked me through the process. This was necessary because the installation CD that came via UPS with my new Motorola gateway modem was strongly convinced that I did not have an Ethernet adapter in my computer, and I was not able to persuade it otherwise. The installation CD balked and would go no further, so I carefully placed it into that special zone that I reserve for CDs that disagree with me. I didn't take good notes while talking to the lady, so you'll probably have to call her for yourself, if you want to relive my own experience in that tech support call. One thing that happened was that she steered me to a webpage that asked all kinds of goofy verification questions (e.g., what was the color of my third least favorite cat -- to exaggerate slightly), and eventually I finished the registration experience and had my own AT&T e-mail account and login page (att.yahoo.com), as well as the address of a page for further tech support (helpme.att.net). Everything was good, and I was up and running. Next day, however, when I turned on the computer, I found that neither Internet Explorer nor Firefox would connect to any webpages. I called back to the 800 number (or, I guess, the 877 number) and was privileged to work with another Indian person, although this one was male and not nearly as nice or communicative as the young lady who had kindly assisted me the previous evening. He was OK, and we did OK; I just didn't find that he was really having his best day. He kept referring to screens and options that did not exist until I worked out for myself what he was trying to say. What emerged from that conversation was that AT&T DSL was incompatible with the ZoneAlarm firewall unless I cared to figure out, on my own, how to configure Zone Alarm so that it would be compatible. The man did not know why I was able to browse without any problem on the previous evening. But my tinkering did verify that, specifically, I could browse online only if (a) I right-clicked on the ZoneAlarm icon in the Windows XP system tray and selected the "Shutdown ZoneAlarm" option or (b) I opened up the ZoneAlarm Control Center and, within the Firewall tab, set Internet Security to medium rather than high. I was not entirely comfortable with the medium setting because ZoneAlarm said that this meant my computer would be visible to hackers. I preferred the "stealth" posture afforded by the high security setting. To achieve high security, I tried going into ZoneAlarm's Firewall > Zones option, where I added my modem's IP address. I wouldn't have known what this was, but the somewhat nice Indian gentlemen had let slip that 192.168.1.254 was the IP address of my modem, and later I noticed it was actually printed on a sticker on the back of the modem. (That number is apparently the default for a lot of modems.) So that's the IP address that I typed into the ZoneAlarm IP Address box on the Zones tab. But apparently that's wasn't good enough, because I still wasn't able to browse until I went back to the Firewall > Main tab and set the sucker back to medium. (We're talking about the slider for the security level for ZoneAlarm's Internet Zone, not for its Trusted Zone.) I thought maybe someone else would have superior expertise in this area, so I tried a customized Google search. A posting by La Luna at Broadband Reports made me think that possibly I was having this problem because of some Microsoft updates I had just installed the previous evening, during my browsing. (Later, while waiting on hold with another tech support call to AT&T, I heard a recording that said Microsoft had indeed released an update that had the effect of restricting access for some Windows users. "Some" may have included me. But meanwhile, events continued to unfold, and ultimately appeared to render the point moot for the time being.) Having downloaded some but not all of the available updates on this new WinXP installation, I was thinking that more updates could be the solution for me. I saw, from Zone Alarm > Overview > Product Info, that I was using version 7.0.470.000. I downloaded the latest version of Zone Alarm, but was not sure what version that might be. The website wasn't saying and it wasn't in the filename. It seemed I would have to install the version to see what version it was. But we didn't get there. I started scouting around for others who might have insights of value. It looked like MistyEyes on the ZoneAlarm forum was having exactly the same problem. In response to his/her question, the advice from Oldsod was as follows:

Make sure your DNS and DHCP server IP's are in your Firewall's Trusted zone. Finding DNS and DCHP servers, etc.:

1. Go to Run type in command , hit 'ok', and type ipconfig /all then press enter. In the returned data list will be a line DNS and DHCP Servers with the IP address(s) listed out to the side. 2. In ZA on your machine on the Firewall>Zones tab click Add and then select IP Address. Make sure the Zone is set to Trusted. 3. Click OK and then Apply and see if that works to fix it. 4. The localhost (127.0.0.1) must be listed as Trusted. 5. The Generic Host Process (svchost.exe) must have server rights for the Trusted Zone. Plus it must have both Trusted and Internet Access. http://zonealarm.donhoover.net/dnsdhcp.html

But I didn't get to that point either, because now my virus scanner informed me that, after a mere two hours of screwing around online, I had already contracted a Trojan virus. That gave me pause. I had been computing for two years without a virus. Now, in a couple of hours, I had one, apparently because I had lowered my firewall because the AT&T DSL modem wouldn't work otherwise. Further scouting around online led to the understanding that people who use cable or DSL modems are advised to use both hardware and software firewalls. ZoneAlarm would be an example of a software firewall. I wasn't sure if a purchased copy of ZoneAlarm (I was using the free download version) would get along better with my DSL modem; some posts online made me think that it might not make any difference. It seemed that the reason I had had no viruses during the previous year, at least, was that my roommate had been using a wireless router and this had served as a hardware firewall. So if I wasn't going to be computing in a place (e.g., a corporate office or university) where they had a dedicated tech support staff and equipment to trim out the riffraff, and if I wasn't going to have a roommate with a wireless router, it appeared that I would have to buy one for myself. I priced one at Newegg for about $55 with shipping. I was just about to buy that router, and then I paused to think. We were talking about a router for $55, plus a delay of maybe five days (including a weekend) before Newegg would have it to me; and then the possibility that I would have to buy a more professional software firewall or other security program. I also discovered, along about this time, that my existing Symantec Antivirus was not even detecting the Trojan, and that the other freebie program that detected it was not going to remove it unless I bought a copy of their full program. (I might have suspected that they were just inventing the virus in order to persuade me to buy their product, but I had been using the freebie version for a year or more without any virus alarms until now.) So $55 for the router, maybe $40 or more for the security program, and downtime for the merchandise delivery. And the prospect of future downtime if it turned out that I still didn't have the virus formula quite right, and got another one. Plus the risk of lost files or information. It was enough to provoke some serious thinking. The computer on which I was trying to install the DSL modem, and was having all these hassles, was the second of my two computers. Some time previously, I had worked through the issues involved with getting a KVM switch, so that I could use one Keyboard, Video screen, and Mouse (KVM) for both computers. I had also been thinking, for quite some time, about installing Ubuntu Linux, but had previously decided that it was not quite ready for prime time. Now, however, as I saw that Linux continued to have a reputation of being relatively free of viruses and spyware, and as I reflected on how it had felt to worry that a hacker might be able to get his/her hands on my private data (having also read that financial motives are behind much of the hacking that takes place nowadays), it seemed to me that I could try this DSL thing again with Ubuntu. If that worked, I would not have to buy the router and all that Windows-oriented firewall software etc. -- at least not yet. So now the scenario was that, quite possibly, I would have only one of my two computers connected to the Internet. This would be an Ubuntu computer, my second (i.e., backup) computer. If I needed to look up something or download something, I would do that on the second machine. The main machine would still be a Windows XP machine; it just wouldn't have Internet privileges anymore -- or at least not until I invested in the router etc., or until I moved the computer to a different place with a safer Internet connection. To try this idea, the main challenge was to get the alternate computer set up with Ubuntu. I had a spare hard drive lying around, a small old one, but Linux doesn't generally take much space, so that was good enough. I unplugged the Windows drive (and just left it sit in the computer) and plugged in, instead, this other old drive. I used the downloaded Ubuntu ISO to burn a CD, and I used the CD to install Ubuntu on the old, spare drive. Installation was painless. It was really quite easy. Ubuntu 08.04 (meaning the April 2008 version) had continued to improve over its predecessors. The harder part was getting connected to the Internet. A very nice lady at AT&T tech support in India tried to help me, but really had no idea what I needed to do, and she said it would be a fee-based service if I wanted one of their Linux-trained techies to walk me through an installation. Reserving that option, I tried calling a tech support guy at the university. He was a little bit amused, but he also did seem to have some familiarity with Ubuntu or at least with Linux generally, and between the two of us, we were able to figure it out. Again, I did not take precise notes, but the following is a reconstruction of what I think we did. First, at the top right-hand corner of the default, unmodified Ubuntu screen, I left-clicked on the monitor-like icon whose yellow tooltip pop-up says "Manual network configuration." That gave me exactly one option, "Manual configuration." Being the kind of person who is very practical when there is no alternative, I selected that option. This took me to a Network Settings dialog with four tabs, of which I would need only the default Connections tab. There, I had two options, both of which were greyed out. Down at the bottom right corner, I chose the Unlock button, and that wiped away the grey. Now I chose Wired Connection, clicked on Properties, unselected Enable Roaming Mode, and chose Automatic Configuration (DHCP). I then clicked OK and Close. Then I went back to Firefox, which comes pre-installed with Ubuntu. I cleaned out the Address bar and typed in just the IP address of my modem again, with nothing else -- the same 192.168.1.254 number as above -- and hit Enter. That gave me a confirmation screen that I had seen the previous evening, when the Windows setup had been working OK with DSL. The tech support guy suggested I try a regular webpage, so I tried CNN.com. It worked! It was really that simple. I am typing the final paragraphs of this message on Firefox in Ubuntu, less than a half-hour after making that tech support call. It remains to be seen what all I can or cannot do in Ubuntu now, but at least the preliminary plan is to keep it running as my Internet gateway, and pick up whatever other Linux knowledge that may come my way as I go along. So, see, let it not be said that I hesitate to take a risk on something new. It has been less than nine years since I first became a Linux newbie, and already I'm at the point of being able to use Ubuntu to go online. I know, it's like -- whoa, slow down -- but that's the naked truth of the matter.