Windows 7 Installation: Chronology

On January 1, I began installing and learning about Windows 7 as an upgrade from Windows XP.  I installed just a few things -- antivirus, for example -- as I continued to research various items.  In the next several days, I reached decisions about assorted aspects of the emerging setup.  For example, I decided that Windows 7 would be my foundation layer, replacing Ubuntu, and that I would use VMware Player (or Workstation, if possible) to run Windows XP, and possibly Ubuntu or other operating systems, in virtual machines running on Windows 7.

On January 4, I awoke to find that Internet Explorer (IE) had frozen up and had to be restarted.  I was pleased to see that, when it restarted, it saved my open tabs and attempted to reopen them.  But the thought that Internet Explorer could crash when it was doing almost nothing on a new installation was a bit of a setback for the idea that Win7 was stable enough to serve as a foundation.  I did continue to use IE, but I also downloaded Google Chrome, and made that my default web browser.

I spent much of the days of January 5 and 6 trying to resolve networking problems.  January 7 and 8 were especially devoted to moving and rearranging partitions.  I was setting up two computers for somewhat different purposes.  Partitions were large, so these steps took a long time.  I had to be actively engaged to work with those network problems, but was more able to let the computer go for hours during the partitioning process.  I spent a lot of time on January 6 and 9 trying to make a RAID0 array work.

Some of these days were devoted to other projects, but this was all still very time-consuming.  As of January 11, I really had not gotten very far.  The soution to the networking problem, I hoped, would be to reinstall Win7 from scratch on one of the two computers I was trying to network.  I learned that it was not possible to restore an image of a Win7 installation to a Win7 software RAID0 partition.  Hence, on January 12 I looked into other RAID options.  That day, I also discovered the possibility of booting into native virtual hard disks (VHDs), and spent a lot of time learning about those.

On January 13, I reviewed progress in light of what I had learned and experienced to this point.  I decided to scale back to a simpler system.  This meant the end of the VHD pursuit, for at least the time being, and probably also the RAID0 arrangement, possibly in favor of a future RAID5 solution.  The Win7 system was performing much faster than WinXP had been, either natively or in VMware on Ubuntu, so I was not presently sure that I would even need RAID-like speed.

To consolidate my progress, I wrapped up the first comprehensive post describing my installation of Windows 7, and started a second post and a second installation.  After further networking hassles, that installation was done on January 17.  At this point, I moved beyond basic connectivity to network enhancement.  One step was to synchronize the computers.  I spent much of January 17 and 18 researching programs that would do that and putting those programs into effect.  This involved getting a parallel Windows installation running on the second computer.  By midday on January 18, and intermittently thereafter, I was working more on new additions, especially Input Director and Teamviewer, to tie the two computers together into one workspace.

Input Director seemed to produce unexpected problems requiring a reinstallation of a backup image on computer B on January 19.  I spent a considerable amount of time, that day, reconfiguring that reinstallation, refining it with additional tweaks (and putting those tweaks on computer A as well), and saving it to an updated image.  From then through January 21, I was gradually mixing in more of my other work while continuing to work through minor problems, further adjust the system, and (in one case) recover from an error involving the accidental deletion of a large number of files.

After January 21, I focused increasingly on getting my actual work done.  There continued to be tweaks and the occasional stray problem that needed fixing.  These actually consumed a fair amount of time, but not nearly as much as before.  By January 25, I had reached a point of being able to focus almost entirely on getting work done.  I hoped that this large investment of time would not only have been interesting (at times) for its own purposes, but would also have productivity payoffs, for me and others, for years to come.  I had been using Windows XP for years and, throughout 2010, had seen how much time I could lose to a slow operating system.  So far, Windows 7 seemed to be a significant improvement.

Windows 7, Vista, and XP: Networking Four Computers

I had installed Windows 7 on two computers.  Here, I'll call them computer A and computer B.  Both were connected in a basic wired network by ethernet cable to a router.  The router I was using was a Belkin Connect N150, model no. F7D5301.  I did not then know of the possibility of turning my computer into a WiFi hotspot, but I probably would have gone with the purchase of a router even if I had known of it.

I wanted to make the computers visible to, and able to share files with, one another.  I also had a laptop running Vista and an old Windows XP desktop.  This post describes the steps I took on the software side, after sorting out prior hardware issues.

I started with just computers A and B connected to the router.  I ran a search, but it seemed like most of the webpages that were coming up had to do with troubleshooting.  I wasn't smart enough to get into trouble yet.  But then, as I started looking at some of those sites, I wondered whether possibly the computers were already visible to one another, merely by being connected to the router and not complaining about any IP address conflicts or anything like that.  In Windows Explorer on computer A, I clicked on Network.  I got an error up by the menu bar:

Network discovery and file sharing are turned off.  Network computers and devices are not visible.  Click to change.

So I clicked and selected "Turn on network discovery and file sharing" and chose only the home network (not public) option.  Within about 30 seconds, Windows Explorer on computer A was showing both computers.  Well, that was easy.  So now I ran the router's setup software on the Vista laptop and on the WinXP machine, and then plugged them into the router.  I changed the WinXP machine's name and rebooted it.

Changing that name left an outdated entry for the WinXP machine's previous name in the displays on several computers.  On the WinXP machine, it produced an error message:  "[Oldname] is not accessible.  You might not have permission to use this network resources."  The outdated entry wouldn't go away when I refreshed (F5) the view.  Note that I was still down in the Network section of the Windows Explorer folders pane.  I was not using the Homegroup option up topside.

At this point, a search led to the advice to go into my router's firmware, via its built-in webpage, and look for a way to configure its list of devices.  Apparently that's where the old name was being stored.  Finding that place in my router required me to go into its installed software.  Doing that required me to reinsert the Belkin CD and try to run the router utility from there, because the link that its installation had added on my Start Menu wasn't working.  It looked like the CD was apparently only for simple installation purposes, either reinstall the software or quit.  Eventually I figured out that Belkin expected me to have auto-play running on my CD drive, else it would not show me the option of going into its advanced features option.  So I went into Control Panel > Autoplay.  But there, I saw that Autoplay was already on by default for all devices.  I had only noticed the advanced features option by accident -- I left the CD in the drive when I rebooted the machine after an update of some other software.  Taking another approach, I downloaded an upgrade of the router's software, installed that, and used its Advanced Settings option to get into the router.  Once there, though, I did not see any entry for the old computer.  By this time, though, a couple of hours had passed -- I had been working on something else -- so maybe the router refreshed itself.  Hitting F5 to refresh the Network entries in Windows Explorer showed that they, too, had forgotten that old machine by now.

At this point, the two computers (A and B) running Win7 were showing Network entries for all four computers, plus administrators on computers A and B, plus the router.  The Vista laptop and the WinXP machine were seeing the Win7 computers, but not each other.  Oddly, the router's DHCP client list was showing the names of three computers, but not the Vista laptop.  The Win7 computers were able to go online; the others were not, even after a reboot.  So far, networking in Win7 was looking a lot easier than it had been in Vista or XP.  I wasn't interested in investing a lot of time in this, and I had been thinking of dismantling the XP machine, so probably that would be the solution to part of this networking problem.

To summarize, networking in Windows 7 appeared to be a matter of plugging computers into a router, maybe fiddling with the router's settings or upgrading its software (neither necessary in this case), and turning on network file sharing when that option came up.  Networking problems with Vista were still an unknown.  I had previously been able to just plug the laptop into the router and go online, and had not tried to share files among other computers.  But then I noticed that someone (I) had set the TCP/IPv4 settings on the laptop to something other than automatic.  That took care of it.  The Vista laptop saw everything.  Its eyes were opened.  That solved the problem for the WinXP machine too.

The remaining question:  was I actually able to do anything among these computers?  On computer A, I double-clicked on the icon for computer B.  It said,

\\Computer B is not accessible.  You might not have permission to use this network resource.

I searched on that and, as recommended, went into Control Panel > Network > Change advanced sharing settings > Home or Work (in the Win7 computers).  There, I made sure everything was on except password-protected sharing.  The only change I actually made was to turn off the requirement for a password.  And that did it.  Computer A was now able to see the contents of computer B.  A similar change on the Vista laptop had the same effect.

Now I could see "Users" or "Users Share" folders.  How to get full access to one computer's contents from another?  The first step seemed to be to right-click on a drive or folder, in Windows Explorer, and choose Share with > Advanced sharing > Sharing tab > Advanced sharing > Share this folder.  I did that with one drive on computer A.  I tried to view it on computer B, but I got an error:

Windows cannot access \\ComputerA\SharedFolder
You do not have permission to access file://computera/SharedFolder.  Contact your network administrator to request access.
For more information about permissions, see Windows Help and Support

I clicked on the Help and Support link.  It said this could be because

You haven't created or joined a homegroup
You're not using a homegroup, and the folder or printer you're trying to access has not been shared
Network discovery is turned off
Password-protected sharing is enabled
The computers aren't in the same workgroup
Your computer doesn't have the latest updates for your router

Of these, it was true that I hadn't joined a homegroup; I wanted to see about doing it without, primarily because I had seen a few notes of people having complaints about homegroups.  The folder had been shared.  I had turned on Network Discovery and password-protected sharing.  I had now installed the latest downloads from Belkin for the router.  I tried to access \\ComputerA\SharedFolder from the laptop.  Same error message -- except that, instead of pointing me toward Windows Help and Support, it said this:

No more connections can be made to this remote computer at this time because there are already as many connections as the computer can accept.

That sounded like old-school networking voodoo.  I didn't want to go there.  I just wanted the computers to link up.  I decided to try the homegroup option, since that seemed to be the only option that might help.  I reasoned that Microsoft had probably created the homegroup thing because the non-homegroup approach to networking was such a cluster.  Ah, but then I discovered a possible reason for that last sentence in the Vista error message.  I had set the Advanced Sharing properties > "Limit the number of simultaneous users" option to 2.  I thought that was probably all I would need.  I tried setting it to 20, where it was before.  While I was there, I clicked on the Permissions button and gave Full Control to Everyone.  I closed out of there and took another look in these other computers.  Now I got more error messages.  On computer B, the attempt to look at \\ComputerA\SharedFolder gave the same error as before.  But on the Vista laptop, it produced this error:

Windows cannot access \\ComputerA\SharedFolder
Check the spelling of the name.  Otherwise, there might be a problem with your network.  To try to identify and resolve network problems, click Diagnose.

I did that.  It came back with this:

\\ComputerA\SharedFolder is available but the user account that you are logged on with was denied access.

Well, it was true -- as I discovered, back in the Advanced Sharing properties dialog -- that if I clicked the Caching button, I got a new option that said this:

All files and programs that users open from the shared folder aer automatically available offline

But I decided that meant that files from computer A would be copied to computer B and stored there somewhere, if I looked at them on computer B.  I didn't want that.  I had enough clutter already.  I set the caching to "No files or programs from the shared folder are available offline."  I tried the reciprocal step of setting up a partition on computer B, to see if it would be available on computer A or on the laptop.  No joy.

I came across a webpage that made me think perhaps I hadn't explored the requirement (above) of making sure the computers were all on the same workgroup.  In Control Panel > System > Computer Name on the XP machine, it was just WORKGROUP.  Same thing on the laptop and the Win7 computers.  So that wasn't the explanation.

So, OK, maybe it was time to try homegroups.  On computer A, in Windows Explorer, I went to the Homegroup link at the top of the folders pane.  That opened up an option to join the homegroup that Windows detected already existing.  I did that.  It told me I needed to get the password from Ray on computer B.  That was odd, because I was Ray, and I didn't have any such password.  I also didn't want the homegroup to have a password.  It was just me here.

Upon seeing a page that showed something different from what I was seeing, I decided to back up here.  Before going on to the homegroup option, I noticed that, when I right-clicked on the drive I wanted to share and selected "Share with," I wasn't seeing a list of groups or people.  But, ah, when I clicked on a folder instead of a drive, I did.  Hmm.  But surely it was possible to make a drive visible to other computers?

I did a search and found a thread where people were having exactly the problems I've described here.  At this point, the last post in that thread suggested starting with Start > Run (or just type) fsmgmt.msc.  I did that, on computer A.  I went into Shares and double-clicked the drive I was trying to share.  This gave me pretty much the same stuff as before, except in its Security tab.  There, I selected Users > Edit > Full Control > Apply.  I clicked back and forth a couple of times to make sure it took.  The first time, it didn't.  I okayed out and tried again to access this drive from computer B.  No luck.  But now I wondered what kind of user this was, this person on another computer.  The answer seemed to be that it was an Everyone.  In other words, the groups or users presently listed in that Security tab were Authenticated Users, SYSTEM, Administrators, and Users; and since those all had full permissions and the person (me) trying to access computer A from computer B *still* couldn't get on, apparently I had to be in the Everyone class.  So, as advised, I clicked Edit to add Everyone, and then gave Full Control to Everyone > Apply > OK.  This would have been just as easy to do back in the drive > right-click > Share with > Advanced dialog, actually.  Now that Everyone was allowed to see everything, surely someone on computer B would now be able to see the contents of the shared drive on computer A.  And it worked.  Woo-hoo!  So the missing part here was that I needed to add Everyone in that special place.

It was getting late, and I'd had too much fun for one evening, so I decided not to press the point and work through it with all of the machines.  I had faith that this was approximately the answer at least for letting other computers see what was on a Win7 machine, and that's all I really wanted to achieve here anyway, as I had nothing interesting on the laptop or the WinXP machine.  There were some other interesting networking possibilities I was eager to get on with, as described in some other posts on this blog that I wrote up about the same time as this one.

Windows 7: IP Address Conflict: What Could It Be?

I was continuing a long, long effort to resolve a home networking problem in Windows 7.  The problem was that, if I connected more than one computer to my Netgear FS605 network switch or my Linksys WRT54GL router, I would get an error message:  "Windows has detected an IP address conflict."  I had really tried a huge number of things -- many confusedly, redundantly, or otherwise chaotically, but nonetheless striving in some ill-formed sense to solve this problem.  The solutions I had tried had worked for others; they just weren't working for me.

At this pint, it occurred to me to take my laptop, router, and switch down the way, and try them on someone else's Internet connection.  But now it was late, so that would have to wait until the next day.  But I did not think that the hardware was the problem.  A router and a switch going bad at the same time, after both had served well?

I noticed, when I tried using Google Chrome to do a search during one of those IP conflict periods (i.e., when I had two computers connected to the switch), that Chrome gave me additional information.  Besides saying "This webpage is not available" and suggesting that I reload, their "More information on this error" link gave me an error message:

Error 105 (net::ERR_NAME_NOT_RESOLVED): The server could not be found.

I did a search on that.  It produced a variety of general and Chrome-specific possible solutions.  One ChromeBoard thread went through many of the issues I had examined here and in the previous post, including changing DNS server to OpenDNS or Google (8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4).  It seemed the change was supposed to be made in the router, though, not on the computer, and that was different from what I had tried before.  On the theory that my problem was one that a router could sort out, but a switch could not, I went back into my router (a Linksys WRT54GL), as described in that post.  I saw that the router was set to a PPPoE connection type, which was right for my modem but may have been wrong for the router.  I changed that to DHCP.  I saved and saw that this did not solve the problem.  My next step was to try the DNS advice, but it was not clear where in the router's page I should change those numbers.  The page had both "Router IP" and "Network Address Server Settings (DHCP)" sections with DNS options.  The latter seemed right.  But there were three "static DNS" spaces to fill.  I tried the Google numbers (above) for the first two of the three.  That wasn't the solution.  Pooofont recommended unplugging the computer from the wall power socket for a half-hour.  I tried for 15 minutes.  One thing that became clear, as I perused that long thread, was that there were many problems within this Error 105.  Continuing:  I checked Win7's Start > services.msc > DHCP Client and DNS Client; mine were already started and automatic.  Another new possibility:  flush DNS using "ipconfig /flushdns."  I tried it on two computers, and then connected them to the switch; no joy.

Another possibility occurred to me.  Perhaps I had a virus.  But a virus that would immediately affect WinXP, Vista, and multiple Win7 installations, without showing any other effects, and that was not picked up by Avast, AVG, or Windows Security Essentials, all of which had been running on one of these machines or another during this process?

Around this time, I noticed that something had changed.  I had noticed it before, but now it caught my full attention.  Computer B was no longer experiencing IP conflicts when I plugged the other computers into the switch.  They continued to report such conflicts, but now computer B was OK.  Not only was it not reporting IP address conflicts, but it was now able to go online, even through the switch, when all three other computers (one running Win7, one running Vista, one running Windows XP) were also plugged into the switch and were reporting IP address conflicts.

Somehow, computer B had reached a point of functionality.  What had I (or the computer) done to achieve this?  The solution was presumably not a matter of the router or the switch; it was seemingly something about computer B in particular.  But what?  I tried to trace back through the previous post, to see what I might have been doing when this change occurred.  I had noticed it while talking to the AT&T guy, so it was before that.  But then I had to call it a day.  The system went into hibernation overnight, and when I came back to it the next morning, computer B, too, was reporting an IP conflict and was unable to go online.  Maybe it had something to do with resetting the modem, though I didn't see how.  My thinking now was that the modem could not tell what lay on the other side of the switch.  As far as the modem was concerned, it was handing out just one Internet connection.  It was up to the switch or router to arbitrate among multiple computers.

Following advice, I opened a command window in each computer (Start > Run > cmd -- or, in Win7, Start > type "cmd") and typed "ipconfig" by itself.  This produced several different results.  In computer A (running Win7) and in the Vista laptop, it did not even try to report an IPv4 address.  In computer B, it reported an IPv4 address of 192.168.131.1.  In the Windows XP machine, it reported 192.168.1.64 as the only IP address.  This seemed to suggest computer B and the WinXP machine should not be in conflict.  I unplugged the two others from the switch.  But computer B and the WinXP machine were still unable to go online.  Only when I removed three of the four machines from the switch was the one remaining machine able to connect with the Internet.  This suggested that the IPv4 address was not the issue, or at least not the only issue.

Another possibility recommended in that same thread was to go into Device Manager (a Control Panel item in Vista and Win7; under Control Panel > System > Hardware in WinXP), look under Network Adapter, and uninstall the ethernet and wireless adapters, then scan for changes and let it reinstall them.  I wasn't using wireless, so I assumed that part would be irrelevant to my situation.  The wired part was a Realtek device on both computer B and the WinXP machine.  I made sure both computers were connected to the switch, and then uninstalled the Realtek adapter.  I did not opt to delete the driver software.  Then, in the Action menu item at the top of Control Panel, I ran "Scan for hardware changes" in both computers, one at a time.  The WinXP machine started its Found New Hardware Wizard.  I couldn't get the CD drive to read the motherboard manufacturer's installation CD at that point, so I rebooted the WinXP machine and it reinstalled its wired adapter automatically during reboot, and reported an IP address conflict when it came back up.  But now computer B was not reporting a conflict.  I tried the same approach with computer A. 
It still reported a conflict and was still unable to go online.

One thing that was different about computer B, in the networking department, was that I had installed VMware Workstation there.  This seemed potentially relevant because there were VMware Virtual Ethernet Adapter for VMnet1 and VMnet 8 listed in Device Manager on computer B.  But I had had the IP address conflict problem after installing VMware, so I didn't see how that could make a difference.

At this point, I came across a suggestion to use Win7's Event Viewer.  That discussion continues in a separate post.

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.

OpenDNS Instead of the ISP for DNS Service

I was wrestling with networking problems in Windows 7, when I came across this quotation on the OpenDNS website:

Rid your household of annoying, intermittent Internet outages. Switch to OpenDNS and immediately notice a faster, more reliable Internet experience. Join the millions who've already unbundled their DNS service from their ISP's Internet connection.

I had not realized that the two could be separated.  For that matter, I really had no idea what DNS service was.  But OpenDNS was free, so I signed up.  I went to their settings page.  In essence, they told me to go to Control Panel > Network and Sharing Center > Change adapter settings > double-click on Local Area Connection > highlight TCP/IPv4 > Properties > Use the following DNS server addresses > Preferred DNS server = 208.67.222.222, Alternate = 208.67.220.220.  (The default setting there was "Obtain DNS server address automatically.")  It wasn't in their instructions, but I clicked "Validate settings upon exit" before clicking OK and closing out of there.  This ran Windows Network Diagnostics, which said, "Troubleshooting couldn't identify the problem."  So that sounded good.  OpenDNS then gave me a webpage where it said, "Success!  You're now using OpenDNS."

I really had no idea what this meant.  But it seemed to be the solution to a part of a cluster of networking problems I was having at this time, as described in other posts in this blog.  So I was happy about that.

Ubuntu 10.04: Ethernet Networking Two Computers and a Router

I had installed Ubuntu 10.04 on two desktop computers.  Both were connected by ethernet cable to a router.  This seemed like the basis for a network, so that the two computers could talk to each other directly.  I had not previously set up a network in Ubuntu.  This post describes that learning experience.

I started with a search for guidance.  This led to a thread that persuaded me to try Samba shares, with Webmin for my Samba GUI.  So I typed these lines, one at a time:

sudo apt-get install samba

wget http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/webadmin/webmin_1.510-2_all.deb

sudo dpkg --install webmin_1.510-2_all.deb

sudo apt-get install -f

The last line was a response to the error messages.  Then, in Firefox, I went to https://localhost:10000 and, after confirming a security exception, I entered the same username and password that I used to log into Ubuntu on the computer.  This gave me a locally stored Webmin webpage.  I clicked "Refresh Modules" on the left side of the page.  When that process was done, I clicked on Servers, in the top left corner.  Sure enough, it said, "Samba Windows File Sharing."  I went through that same process on both computers.

Then I searched for information on how to use Webmin.  This led to the discovery that Webmin was not fully compatible with Ubuntu, which would explain why it wasn't available for download through Synaptic.  So now it was time to undo what I had just done:

sudo apt-get remove webmin

sudo apt-get autoremove

As an alternative, someone mentioned eBox.  It looked like eBox had had some hard times, but hopefully those were all behind us now.  So I went into Synaptic and marked ebox-samba for installation.  This brought the plain ebox platform and a boatload of other packages along with it.  One of those packages was ddclient, which asked me many questions that I could not answer.  I tried to fake it, just going with the defaults, but wound up with an "Empty host list" message telling me that I had failed in some significant sense.  With that taken care of, Synaptic went ahead and installed all these downloads, presenting me once again with the ddclient Empty host list before it was done.  Yet after all that, there was no eBox icon in my menu and typing "ebox" at the prompt just gave me "command not found."  So I used the same steps as above to remove eBox.

A different search led to a page that advised me to type this command:

sudo apt-get install samba samba-common system-config-samba

With that done, I went to System > Administration > Samba.  This brought up a Samba Server Configuration dialog.  There, it looked like I could go to File > Add Share to designate a folder that would be shared between computers.  I took these same steps on the other computer.  Then I specified a folder on one computer that I did want to share.  I made it writable, visible, and accessible to everyone.  I found that this had to be a folder; I couldn't share a whole partition.  Later, I saw in another source that I should also have gone into Preferences > Server Settings > Security tab, there in the Configuration dialog, and change Authentication Mode to Share and Guest Account to my username, so I went back and did that,  Then, back in Nautilus, I right-clicked on that folder and selected Sharing Options > Share this folder and allowed others to create and delete.  I right-clicked on the folder in Nautilus again and went to Properties > Permissions, but it was already owned by me with all kinds of rights and privileges.

That seemed to be all I was supposed to do.  But I couldn't figure out where I was supposed to go, on the other computer, to see the shared folder on the first computer.  Eventually I saw instructions to go to Ubuntu's menu > Places > Network.  There, it had entries for each of the two computers, plus something called Windows Network.  I found that, if I just double-clicked on the entry for the other computer and then waited patiently for it to do its thing, with no visible indication that it had heard me, eventually (after maybe ten seconds) it would get around to showing me the shared folder on the other computer.  And it worked:  I was able to retrieve a file from that other computer.