Vocal Voices

Urgent phone call from a mate "Can't get on the Internet".

When I get there the laptop is on, the TV is working and so is the phone.

She is on VirginMedia but on the weirdest setup as done by their engineer. There is a modem with the fibre optic cable, phone (RJ11), ethernet (RJ45) and power cable. Everything is on and the lights are green. Then there is a separate D-link wireless router. It has a power cable and the ethernet cable from the modem is in the Global port - it has four other ports for networking devices. All is OK.

Now, the wi-fi icon in the laptop systray says it is fine and the list of local wi-fi networks shows as being connected to the right network and with internet access... except that there isn't. A look in the state of the nework adapters shows the wireless as fine but the local network cable as unplugged. The laptop is on wi-fi, I checked. Maybe the one on the router is the problem. I unplug it and try all the other ports with the same problem. Try another cable. The modem is saying that it is talking to the router via the ethernet cable and the router says that it is listening. I try some other tricks but eventually M says she will phone Virgin.

Nice lad on the other end and we go through all that I have done and he goes through his script. We finally get to the reboot option, it is always there, and that's where the fun starts. The lappy has just been auto-updated to W10 and it tells us not to turn off whilst it upgrades. It then reboots and says not to turn it off whilst it installs and configures the upgrades - nearly 90 minutes!!! Whilst all this was happening I was asking about any problems with W10. There had been none with the modems, they were fine, but the D-Link router is old and it maybe needs replacing. Anyway, the computer is now working but still with the no internet problem so I suggest to him that I will do a hard reset (again) on the router - Hey Presto!

Now, M wanders around the house attached to her laptop so it is always on wi-fi. It was only plugged in to ethernet when it was setup yonks ago. If it wants to update as she goes to bed she leaves it on the table to do its own thing, and that is what she did. So what happened?

Data, TV and phone all come into the modem. The broadband then goes via ethernet to the router, the router then sends wi-fi signals to the laptop. The laptop picks up the signal and all is fine. However, with M's setup there was a problem between the ethernet ports on the modem and router and the router was telling us lies, it was ill, the router was not getting data from the modem so its wi-fi signal was therefore blank, empty. All that was happening with the laptop was that it was getting an empty signal. It was the second hard reset on the router that did the trick. So M is now about to receive a new wi-fi router modem from Virgin.

The moral of the story? Don't always blame MicroSoft updates for everything, there are a few occasions when things are not their fault.... rare, but thy do happen. All my cursing and swearing about them during the above problem was wasted blue air.

This reminds about a problem I had many years ago, not about computers.
We had a Hoover washing machine which had a heater. Came home one day and my wife said it would not work. This included the wringers which fitted in a slot at the top.
Tried everything I could think of such as a new fuse in the plug, a different outlet socket.Connecting a cable directly to the motor by passing the switch on the machine worked.
I then looked at the switch on the washing machine. It was in a little recess and had two off positions, one for the washer and one for a heater to heat the water if it was cold.
My wife had used the heater and then just turned it once switching everything off. So simple yet so frustrating

WM, long painful experience has taught me to take the least cost approach. Windows thinks it's good but no internet, go to the first point (modem) and try to diagnose. Then move out. I would have removed the cable from the router and plugged it into the Laptopf giving the laptop a direct path to the modem.

I do this because I now have a modem (with wifi switched off) and two other routers on my network at home. From time to time they all throw wobblies and it makes diagnosis easier if you start closest to the internet feed and move out.

Frustrating as hell isn't it when you take the word of a (supposedly), working piece of hardware, only to find it's telling porkies...

Hindsight is a wonderful thing. We have to keep doing it to keep the brain processes running.

Suff, she has had problems before but usually her nephew goes round and follows the Virgin call centre's advice for her.

The setup she has is old, about seven years, and is well and truly Heath Robinson. The router looks like an after-thought strapped on to provide wi-fi and a few extra ethernet ports.

A while back her digi box went on the blink and was replaced by Virgin, I could not understand why they did not do the whole thing. I have suggested that she leaves things a few weeks then phones up (pretending) to have the same problem and to ask customer services to install the more modern wi-fi router/modem they now use. My ex is on Virgin and her system has all the bells and whistles.

Having said that she might not have to pretend, the D-Link looks to be on its last legs.

I did wonder why they didn't just stick in the latest box. I thought they were trying to bump sales by selling on the back of capabilities they had already pushed out.

Perhaps it's the package...