Problem with cable modem

This actually pertains to a problem stated when I first joined this board. Have a friend that his system kept restarting when he was on-line with his cable modem. The supplier is Comcast Cable. You may remember this one Rockster2u

Anyway I finally got time to get into his machine. Here is what I've done:

1) Dropped him from Win XP to Win 2000 Pro at his request. He wanted to be running what I do as I will be servicing his system down the road. Still crashes but without restart. Symptom now is that it may work on-line for a while and crash or may crash imediatle on opening IE. I don't remember it crashing with Outlook Express and haven't gotten it to crash with Real Player 10 doing live stream. The crash occures as follows. Will work fine then just stop. Still have mouse. Click on the 'X' on Explorer and a weak beep and dead froze. Seems to crash less with Firefox. But still crashes. The IE 6 that he is running came off of the Comcast install CD.

2) Re-seated everything!

3) Pulled his RAM and ran Microsoft's Memory diagnostics in each stick. On his origional MSI board I crashed on the test but the cable modem was attached. (get to the origional board deal later). This was while still running XP.

4) RAM made it through all 11 tests under 2000. Both one stick at a time and both. (running 2 256meg sticks)

5) happened to have a Dell Dimension 4100 mbo and power supply along with an ATI Radeon 7000 sitting around. Threw them in.

6) Updated the Dell board Bios from A6 to A11.

7) All Windows updates are in.

8) Replaced the modem to no effect.

9) Tried another network card. Also tried connecting through USB. No effect.

10) Both mbo have onboard nic. Made sure that it's turned off. Would try the Dell on-board nic but don't have a cable, just the header.

11) Tried the nic that worked best in all open slots.

Have NOT gotten updated mbo drivers for the Dell yet. Going to Dell to see if I can find them after I leave this.

If I find updated drivers (did a quick look yesterday and didn't see) and it's no help I plan on putting in a dial up modem, reinstalling windows, doing explorer update to 6 through windows update and seeing what happens. I'm looking at this possibility as the explorer 6 came off of the comcast cd and firefox has less trouble. Does this make sence??

Any other ideas?

 

Hi Jay,

Seems to relate rather specifically to internet connection.

Common factor...the Comcast software maybe.

I would go to Comcast's website and see if they have instructions for manual setup of the connection, rather than using their setup CD (which I take it you are using). Their setup program may be conflicting with the drivers.

They should have telephone support. Try talking to one of their techies.

Matt

 

I talked to one of their support people. Compared settings and all were correct. I also printed out their manual settings info from their site but haven't gotten back to the system to check. From what I remember they all seemed to be what is already set.

It's really weird. I've never seen anything like this.

 

Thats what makes this one pretty interesting. I'd give you high marks for your approach and once again, Mattman hit on a very good question. I'd certainly go along with losing the Comcast software as its totally unnecessary and it eliminates another potential problem source but I don't have a clue at this point in time - you've already covered most of your bases.

Side Bar - I will add another thing about Dell although its unrelated. Two months ago I had to rebuild (software and OS-wise) a brand spanking new Inspiron laptop after 2 hours of use by its teenage owner. That's a story by itself, but the drivers on the Dell CD for the on-board Intel wireless G were wrong and the drivers on their website were wrong. My quest got down to revision numbers and manufacturing dates of the device itself. On my third OS installation and go-around, I finally found some Intel drivers that worked flawlessly and after being bounced up the technical supervisory ladder at Dell, I got all kinds of thanks and an admission of "we know there is a problem" - unfortunately it was after the fact.

Keep plugging - you'll find the problem with the methodology you are employing.

Regards,

 

Thanks for the input!!

Iinstalled the updated Dell chipset drivers... I't crashed once since yesterdat eve and as I wasn't thereI don't know if it was related.

Now togetrid of the Comcast explorer...

 

System hasn't crashed in a few days. I think I beat it!!

I think it was the combo of the bios and chipset updates... Not really sure to be honest since I was doing so much at once.

Now I need to do my system... Just went DSL and it seems to be working well. Now I need to install a wireless router to share with another system. Will be interesting as I've never installed a router before. Since I really need to do a re-install on my system due to me messing up I may wait. I installed it once but had problems. Worked but I couldn't change password or get rid of it. Just need to get prepared and go for it...

 

Jay, it would be good if you have beaten it, you have put in a great effort .

The reinstall should go OK. If you find you are going down the same path, pull out and reinstall again. If the system is "fresh ", it does not hurt to restart until you find where the problem is (I will reinstall a system until I am sure the bug is gone).

Not sure, but if you are trying to negate the Win XP password, you may have a big job in front of you. Ask on the XP forum. (If you negate the password, it may make your security open to attack).

Matt

 

Naw...

The system that had the problem is fine. Although he did leave a message on my machine today that it's suddenly running slow... I keep telling him that if he's gonna go to those sites he needs to run spybot a lot!!

It's actually mine that I was talking about doing the re-install. I was playing in add/remove hardware and turned on show all and saw a question mark. Figured it was something I had in, took out, and forgot about... so uninstalled it. After it said that it couldn't uninstall anything else as they were need for the boot process I proceeded to reinstall my mainboard, video, sound, etc. drivers.

The password thing has nothing to do with windows. It's my router. Kept comming up and asking for a password. Kept checking remember pass but kept comming up. Now it's not.

I wanna re-install due to the oops on the add/remove hardware screwup, not the password thing.

First time I've ever networked... well not the first time but the first under today's technology. Heck, I wrote an assembly routine 18 years ago to network 16 systems through a MIDI port. Dosen't do me a bit of good today.

I'll figure it out, take notes, and then reinstall with the notes for the networking. Guess I might as well figure out the network before the install so I don't do the install twice if I mess up...

Actually I think it's kinda funny. I've written network software in assembly yet can't get a lousy DSL router to work reliably.

 

Ha,ha... Second problem with the system I had trouble with on the cable modem. Seems he came home and it took about 15 minutes to full boot. Once it was booted you could actually watch the steps it takes to fade in and out menus and such. Checked out IE's history and it would seem that his roomie visited well over 100 **** sites... Sure am glad that I ALWAYS backup the registry after an install! Imported the saved registry file and it's flying again!