Another computer question.

[Michael Weber]

I picked up an old Dell windows XP laptop I'm trying to access the internet on. I installed drivers for both the wired and wireless hardware. Checking their status tells me they are both working properly. However, using internet Explorer neither will connect to the internet. I'm using the Cox supplied modem and a purchased wireless router I have been using for ages without issue using my iPad. Using the laptop gets me the message "server not found" on any URL I enter. I was on the verge of thinking I had bad hardware. But, I have a small data acquisition box also plugged into the router. When installed it was automatically assigned an address (192.1xx.x.xx). When I type that address into the internet Explorer address bar it communicates fine with both wired and wireless interfaces and I can access its functions and read data through its built in server. Haven't really used a windows machine in years. Maybe I'm missing something simple? IDK. Any advice appreciated.

[Lee Schierer]

Is the wifi adapter and/or the lan port actually turned on?

[Lee DeRaud]

How did you set up the IP4 address on the XP box, DHCP or manual? That it works with the hardcoded IP address sounds like it doesn't have a good DNS server address set.

Can it see the iPad?

[Michael Weber]

How did you set up the IP4 address on the XP box, DHCP or manual? That it works with the hardcoded IP address sounds like it doesn't have a good DNS server address set.

Can it see the iPad?. Thanks for taking time to help. What you say sounds reasonable. Must have been automatic. I'm looking at the connection status window and it shows Assigned by DHCP, IP address 192.168.1.149, subnet mask 255.255.255.0 and default gateway (which I assume is my router) 192.168.1.1. Is that what you're referring to? Not sure what you mean by "Can it see the iPad" but my iPad access the internet fine.

[Michael Weber]

Is the wifi adapter and/or the lan port actually turned on? I assume so, I can access the web from other devices and the laptop says the adapter is working normally

[Doug Dawson]

I picked up an old Dell windows XP laptop I'm trying to access the internet on. I installed drivers for both the wired and wireless hardware. Checking their status tells me they are both working properly. However, using internet Explorer neither will connect to the internet. I'm using the Cox supplied modem and a purchased wireless router I have been using for ages without issue using my iPad. Using the laptop gets me the message "server not found" on any URL I enter. I was on the verge of thinking I had bad hardware. But, I have a small data acquisition box also plugged into the router. When installed it was automatically assigned an address (192.1xx.x.xx). When I type that address into the internet Explorer address bar it communicates fine with both wired and wireless interfaces and I can access its functions and read data through its built in server. Haven't really used a windows machine in years. Maybe I'm missing something simple? IDK. Any advice appreciated.

It's a good thing you weren't able to connect to the Internet. XP hasn't been supported in years. When I go into a bank and they're still using XP on their terminals, I just leave. Don't be an easy target.

[Lee DeRaud]

. Thanks for taking time to help. What you say sounds reasonable. Must have been automatic. I'm looking at the connection status window and it shows Assigned by DHCP, IP address 192.168.1.149, subnet mask 255.255.255.0 and default gateway (which I assume is my router) 192.168.1.1. Is that what you're referring to? Not sure what you mean by "Can it see the iPad" but my iPad access the internet fine.What IP/gateway/DNS addresses is the iPad using? Assuming the iPad is also set up in the 192.168.1.xxx range, you should be able to open a command ("DOS") window on the Dell and ping the iPad to see if the WIFI on the Dell is really working. You can also try manually setting the Dell to use whatever DNS the iPad is using.

[Kev Williams]

It's a good thing you weren't able to connect to the Internet. XP hasn't been supported in years.

Actuallly that's only half true- What's not supported is AUTOMATIC updates... Microsoft has still releases regular updates for XP; 639 updates in 2018, 366 so far this year. XP users must hit Microsoft's update catalog and download them manually...

[Michael Weber]

What IP/gateway/DNS addresses is the iPad using? Assuming the iPad is also set up in the 192.168.1.xxx range, you should be able to open a command ("DOS") window on the Dell and ping the iPad to see if the WIFI on the Dell is really working. You can also try manually setting the Dell to use whatever DNS the iPad is using.
Thanks again Lee. The iPad address is a series of 6 hexadecimal numbers as near as I can tell. Can't ping it at all. I did drag out another old computer and wired it to the router. I could ping the laptop from it and also ping it from the laptop. I'm beginning to recall why I developed a dislike to windows years ago.:mad: About ready to put this problem on the back burner.

[Derek Meyer]

Sounds like a DNS issue to me. Your DNS address on the iPad looks like it is an IPv6 address, which might not be installed on your Windows XP machine.

Open a command prompt and issue the command ipconfig /all. What do you have for the DNS addresses? If they look legit, then try pinging them and see if you get a response. If you do, then your network communication is fine and you will need to look elsewhere for an issue, like an internet security program or a proxy server that is misconfigured. If you can't ping the DNS servers, it may be a configuration issue with your router.

[Lee DeRaud]

Your DNS address on the iPad looks like it is an IPv6 address, which might not be installed on your Windows XP machine."A series of 6 hexadecimal numbers" sounds more like a MAC address. Worst case temporary fallback is to set the DNS to 8.8.8.8, which is Google's public DNS address.

(Kind of unlikely that Cox is supplying an IPv6 address for its default DNS server: that's just asking for a veritable flood of tech support calls.)

[Michael Weber]

Thanks everyone for trying to help. I just don't have the background needed for this and i won't ask others to waste their time in what i expect is a futile undertaking. The more I work at this the worse things become. Time to get ready to leave for vacation on Thursday.

[Dick Strauss]

The problem may be your Internet Explorer browser. I seem to remember that the last version of IE compatible with XP would no longer access the internet with many providers. You may need to download Chrome on another PC and load it to this PC

[Curt Harms]

To check if it's a DNS problem you could input this number in your browser address bar: https://172.217.10.110. That's the ip address for google.com. If that works DNS is not happy. If it doesn't you may have something else going on. Incidentally there are free operating systems that work pretty well on XP era computers and are supported.

[Kev Williams]

I haven't fully read all the responses, if this has been covered, my aplogies...

Open a command prompt (click START/RUN/ type 'command') then type IPCONFIG and enter...

if you get 192.168.xx.xx then your router HAS issued your computer an IP address-

However, if you get 0.0.0.0, you're TCP-IP stuff isn't setup correctly- I'm in a time crunch at the moment or I'd continue, sorry- I'll be back, in the meantime, IF you're getting 0's, maybe someone can help with that in the meantime...

[Michael Weber]

The problem may be your Internet Explorer browser. I seem to remember that the last version of IE compatible with XP would no longer access the internet with many providers. You may need to download Chrome on another PC and load it to this PCno luck with chrome either. thanks.

[Michael Weber]

To check if it's a DNS problem you could input this number in your browser address bar: https://172.217.10.110. That's the ip address for google.com. If that works DNS is not happy. If it doesn't you may have something else going on. Incidentally there are free operating systems that work pretty well on XP era computers and are supported.Thanks, it would not connect using that ip address.

[Michael Weber]

I haven't fully read all the responses, if this has been covered, my aplogies...

Open a command prompt (click START/RUN/ type 'command') then type IPCONFIG and enter...

if you get 192.168.xx.xx then your router HAS issued your computer an IP address-

However, if you get 0.0.0.0, you're TCP-IP stuff isn't setup correctly- I'm in a time crunch at the moment or I'd continue, sorry- I'll be back, in the meantime, IF you're getting 0's, maybe someone can help with that in the meantime...Thanks, the laptop has been assigned an ip address and i can ping it from another computer.

[Kev Williams]

Just stabbing in the dark here, apologies if you've been thru this -- ;)

try this:
Click on these:
Control Panel (Classic view if not already in classic view)
Network Connections
Local Area Connection
Properties button
---- you should get something that looks like this:
http://www.engraver1.com/dns1.jpg
-- Do you have all of these in this list? Especially the Internet Protocol?
...if so, highlight like mine and hit "Properties"...

Mine is setup fully automatic, so it's essentially blank:
http://www.engraver1.com/dns2.jpg


Using the command prompt and the ipconfig command will 'fill in the blanks'...
http://www.engraver1.com/dns3.jpg

-- If yours looks like mine, you should be able to connect to the internet. If anything's missing, it'll need fixing :)

[Doug Dawson]

Actuallly that's only half true- What's not supported is AUTOMATIC updates... Microsoft has still releases regular updates for XP; 639 updates in 2018, 366 so far this year. XP users must hit Microsoft's update catalog and download them manually...

To quote the wikipedia page for XP (you should correct it if it's wrong):

Beyond the final security updates released on April 8 [2014] no more security patches or support information are provided for XP free-of-charge; "critical patches" will still be created, and made available only to customers subscribing to a paid "Custom Support" plan. As it is a Windows component, all versions of Internet Explorer for Windows XP also became unsupported.

So there. Once again, don't be an easy target, and don't encourage other people to be an easy target.

I liked XP, sort-of, but 7 was a better OS. I wish they made something so good now; alas, even support for that is scheduled to end next year. Change is hard.

Just say, stack-ranking sucks. Etc.

[Lee DeRaud]

Just stabbing in the dark here, apologies if you've been thru this -- ;)

Using the command prompt and the ipconfig command will 'fill in the blanks'...
http://www.engraver1.com/dns3.jpg

-- If yours looks like mine, you should be able to connect to the internet. If anything's missing, it'll need fixing :)Use "ipconfig /all" (instead of just "ipconfig"), and it will also show what DNS servers are in play. It would also be helpful if we could see how to do this on an iPad to compare the one that works with the one that doesn't.

[Kev Williams]

To quote the wikipedia page for XP (you should correct it if it's wrong):

Beyond the final security updates released on April 8 [2014] no more security patches or support information are provided for XP free-of-charge; "critical patches" will still be created, and made available only to customers subscribing to a paid "Custom Support" plan. As it is a Windows component, all versions of Internet Explorer for Windows XP also became unsupported.

So there. Once again, don't be an easy target, and don't encourage other people to be an easy target.

I liked XP, sort-of, but 7 was a better OS. I wish they made something so good now; alas, even support for that is scheduled to end next year. Change is hard.

Just say, stack-ranking sucks. Etc.

Here's the webpage, with 2019 updates, I just searched "XP 2019 updates... https://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/Search.aspx?q=XP%20updates%202019
-- anyone who's charging for these downloads is probably breaking the law...

-note the page that comes up is just #1 of 15. I just call 'em as I see 'em. :)
I'm not encouraging, nor am I discouraging the use of XP. Myself, I HAVE to use XP, certain programs I rely heavily on simply won't work on a non-DOS based computer.

[Myk Rian]

I sure do miss OS/2.

[Frank Drackman]

If true, you are the only one. I believe that the other guy died a few years ago.


I sure do miss OS/2.

[Lee DeRaud]

If true, you are the only one. I believe that the other guy died a few years ago.Committed suicide out of loneliness, as I recall.