Cable/DSL Router and Earthlink Total Access

Has anyone got this to work without buying EL's Home Networking kit and paying the extra $9+/mo???

They say that there are no special settings needed, yet when I install TA2004 it cannot see my internet connection, even though I am on and connected. I have an SMC7004ABR cable/dsl 4-port router, 2 win98 machines and an win2k server and all work great. I was installing the TA2004 for my kids PC (win98) to take advantage of the free server based parental control features.

Any ideas, suggestions?

1slim

I've been trying for about 2 months now off and on. Got the same setup and reasons as you: Want the parental control on the kids' PC and have multiple PCs connected to an SMC7004ABR. I'm also able to connect to the internet (w/Mozilla and IE) but TA refuses to cooperate. I CAN connect with TA through a modem, but I don't want the kids tying up the phone line.

I have also:

- Reloaded TCP/IP for my NIC.
- Tried various combinations of manual configurations through TA's settings panel for addresses, gateways, domains, etc.
- Tried various manual configurations for my NIC's TCP/IP settings through the W98 control panel.
- Set up the PC in the router's DMZ.
- Made sure that the router wasn't blocking any ports (any idea if TA uses nonstandard ports?)
- Scoured the internet looking for links related to this problem. Yours is the first I've run across and the rest have very little good to say about TA2004.
- Tried installing TA on my XP laptop, but got the same error.

In short I've done everything but connect directly to the cable modem. Haven't done that mainly because I haven't gotten around to it yet, but even if that fixes the problem, what's the use of having a router if a single PC is going to hog the connection?

Earthlink's tech support has been useless. The first contact (through chat) connected me to someone who was more interested in selling me their networking package than fixing my problem. The second call said that it was the router and I'd have to connect directly to the cable modem. Said that sometimes the downloadedable version of TA has trouble connecting and sent me a CD. Both the download and CD have the same version number, and neither work. The third call (with a "Senior support specialist") had me fiddle with TA's settings panel but it wasn't anything I hadn't tried before.

What's the exact error message you're getting? I'm able to enter the userid and password, but then get the message "Unable to connect to device <nameOfMyNIC>." This suggests to me it's not a problem of TA connecting to the internet -- it's not even getting that far -- but that the TA program is having trouble connecting to the NIC. There's probably a device setting somewhere in TA or W98 that can cure this.

My next step is to try to get an older copy TA working, then upgrade it to TA2004.

1slim,

Finally got it to work! It happened sometime after I reloaded windows on the machine. Most of the gory details along with others who have the same problem are over on URL
Good luck.