What happened to my LAN

Im in a jam here i have comp 1 sharing the A Dialup connection using cat5 crossover.

Everything was working ok, i say was!

The problem is that Comp2 (client) is now unable to brows the Internet .
Both o/s are xppro
I have tried setting static IPs on both LAN Adapters
Both comps can talk to each other.Comp1 can brows the internet

If i type an IP address into comp2s browser ie http://www.216.239.37.99 i am able to brows from googles search page.


I really dont no what im looking for in reguards to trouble shooting this problem.

Your help is much in need here Thanks

the first place to start on something like this are the obvious, general connectivity things. Being able to browse by IP but not by names on comp2 is pretty informative, actually. It narrows things down quite a bit, to a clear suggestion of DNS issues. So....

1. firewall settings on Comp1. Is that shared connection running through XP's built-in firewall, or perhaps ZoneAlarm or something like it? Is that software blocking DNS traffic to comp2? That would produce the behavior you've described. To be clear, DNS operates on UDP port 53. That port needs to be open for traffic in both directions on comp1.

2. DNS server setting on comp2 - is it set? If you can browse by IP but not by name, then usually DNS traffic is not happening. There are 2 major reasons why that might be true. Either problem #1 is blocking DNS traffic from getting to comp2, or comp2 just plain doesn't know where a useable DNS server is. (a third option is that the normally useable DNS server just happens to be down at the moment, but we'll ignore that possibility) This would also produce the behavior you've described. To know if a DNS server is set for the connection on comp2, either set one manually, or use "ipconfig -all" from the command line to see what XP *thinks* the current DNS server is for comp2's NIC card, after you've established the dialup connection on comp1. I'd go with a manual setting if you know one off-hand.

Oh, and just to state what may not be obvious - unless comp1 is also a DNS server, then comp2 should NOT use comp1's IP as its DNS entry. Now, setting up comp1 as a caching-only DNS server would not be all that hard and would have definite advantages... see the docs for BIND on how to do that.

In either case, looking at "netstat -i 2" (from a DOS prompt) on *both* machines while attempting to browse by name on comp2 can be helpful. you'll be able to see what traffic is making it to comp1, then being passed on to comp2. If something that should be making it from 1 to 2 isn't, well, there's a clue on the solution. To browse the web by name from comp2, comp1 needs to be passing on traffic on TCP port 80 and UDP port 53, at a minimum. Email has its own ports (TCP 25, 110, and 143 for SMTP, POP3 and IMAP4, respectively).

Another valuable test would be to move the modem to comp2 and try to dial directly from it. If it can't use the web normally this way, then there's probably something more complicated going on with comp2, something I probably won't be able to help with via remote like this.

There are some things you can eliminate as causes, too. Since you can browse from comp2 by IP's, then it's not a gateway issue, nor a routing issue. It's almost certainly DNS-related.

JK, MCSE

I have uploaded copies of ipconfig /all for both adapters.

UDP PORT 53 under TCP/IP Filtering these settings remain at the default settings. So i guess this port is inabled by default.

Thanks for your suggestions and help

Problem solved

The good thing about XP Pro is that you can use restore points.

Still uncertian what caused comp2 to fail but i will now atempt to remove those apps installed after the restore point.

any idaes on logging apps-programs after creating a restore pont?

Thanks for the support