April 28, 2005

• Best of luck with those exams. Maybe check your ethernet card/WiFi/modem drivers? /no clue what I'm talking about.
• My dsl modem does have all it's lights on (which is its signal for everything being good so far as it knows. The modem has access, I just can't access the modem).
• You should not have installed that Sygate crap.
• Odd. Well, you're not the only one... This might be a relevant forum thread. The mod recommends manually uninstalling the program from the registry, and then "goto XP TCP connection and tell it to repair TCP/IP". For what it's worth, this has the official troubleshooting. Oy. Good luck.
• I asked #2 and he says it Sygate shouldn't be able to block access after reinstalling an OS. It's probably not Sygate causing the problem. He says it's "excessively strange" that upgrading Windows didn't fix the problem, and he's pretty handy with anything TCP/IP related. Are you behind a firewall now? Who's your DSL provider? Do you have a modem/router? Have you tried using a different computer on the same network to access the web?
• I'll second the excessively strange and raise you an extremely odd that reinstalling the OS didn't fix things. It seems more likely that you wiped out any kind of special configuration needed by your ISP when you did the reinstall; how exactly are you connecting to the internet (or trying to)?
• (Sorry, to be more specific -- who is your DSL provider, and did they give you any kind of special software to use? Do you have anything in the XP system tray that talks about an internet connection?)
• I've heard that some firewalls are actually designed to continue to block things when they're disabled- maybe assuming that either a hacker or stupid user disabled it? I don't know, I think it's kind of shitty, and I've only heard it regarding disabling the firewall, not uninstalling.
• The only reason that reinstalling the os might not have worked is if an upgrade or a reinstall in place was done rather than a reformat. If a reformat wasn't done, that would be a good thing to try, but of course remember to back up all your data including things like bookmarks and emails and things like that. If a reformat was done, I would guess that the information to get online was messed up. Perhaps the sygate set up a proxy which would be a step between windows and the router and removing sygate means windows is still looking for that middle step?
• I thought that only grandmas used firewalls, now what's your IP address.
• 127.0.0.1
• Have you tried unplugging your modem and letting it sit for 5-10 minutes? I'm not sure how DSL works, but sometimes when I make big changes on my computer, my cable modem gets confused (and it lights up like it's ok, but it's lying). I unplug it from the power source and let it sit for a while, plug it back in, start up my computer and things are ok. Worth a shot, at least before you reformat the hard drive.
• When you upgraded from ME to XP (which must have been fun), Windows probably transferred many registry entries to the new os. These could have included references to Sygate and it's related DLLs and services. To clean it up, you'll probably have to go through the tedious manual uninstall process as mentioned by pianistic here. Also, XP with service pack 2 now enables it's own mostly lame firewall by default, so you may have the Windows firewall and the remnants of the Sygate firewall fighting with each other. You could try disabling the XP firewall in the Windows Security Center then try the "Repair this connection" option in your network settings. Good luck.
• Another thing to try perhaps.
• Sorry I haven't been able to respnd until now. I did not reformat, I only upgraded. I don't know if the upgrade has SP1 and/or SP2. (I hope it doesn't have SP2, I've heard bad things about it). I'm on DSL, throug Verizon, guess I should've mentioned that. I don't have any special software to connect, except for the driver for the modem. I don't have any firewall installed at the moment. I haven't tried another computer on the same network, because I don't have another one to do that with. When ever my old firewall crashed (Zonealarm), it would lock up all internet access. It seems like a intentional fail-safe, because it's better to fail protected than to fail exposed. I assume Sygate did the same, It just existed in a state of perpetual crashing. I am going to try that manual uninstall. I don't know exactly how a firewall operates, I just know hat it (somehow) stops all datat flow through ports. I have a relatively good understanding of computer stuff, but I have absoluely no understanding of things like ports. This manual uninstall is just some registry editing. Will this have an effect on my ports? I don't know. I think it should have some effect. I am going to print out a copy of the manual uninstall and see if that works. (I'll also print out that TCP/IP thing from microsoft). It sucks so bad that to repair my internet, I need the internet first. It's so difficult that way. If this does work, does anyone have any recommendations for a frewall? (I guess I should be asking your grandmas, but...) Thanks for all the help you guys. I hope it works. I guess we'll see when I get back home.
• I miss my firefox spellchecker.
• Hey tracy, Is it possible for you to email me the IP address that my earlier posts (like early April or March) are from? (I'm still having internet woes. We think my IP address has been changed to something it's not. The computer autodetects an address that (according to tech support) isn't existant, even though it looks like a valid one. They think my winsock registry has been corrupted, and it's making the computer err in it's autodetection. I don't even understand if this makes sense, but we've run out things to try) I've tried to get it from my ISP, but I'm having trouble contacting a human there. We're switching from DSL to cable soon anyways. Worse comes to worse, we can let them hook it up, and then be all like "hey this doesn't work, what gives?" get their support. (Yes, that's ethical, because these guys require me to pay 30 bucks to have some guy plug a cable into the wall and then into a box that I could pick up myself. I'd be done with it right now, instead of waiting 3 weeks for this guy)
• No such luck sorry, Mr K. #2 recommends Kerio 2.15 from download.kerio.com if you're still after a replacement firewall. He also recommends SP2 - there's nothing wrong with it.
• Thanks anyways tracy. I will need a replacement firewall when I manage to restore access, so I'll check that out.
• Not on topic, but the title is Tech Support George: Can anyone tell me what's up with this site? All I know is that it's a download-only store, and that their software is very, very cheap. I can't find anything else, though, which is cause for suspicion. The reason I was at the site: looking for good, but inexpensive, fax software. I was studying for my MCSA on Windows XP Pro when I read that that OS has fax capabilities built-in. I was hoping this was the case with Windows 2000 Pro, which is what we're using here at work, but such is not the case. Can anyone prove me wrong (I hope)? Anyway, I *did* check out WinFax Pro, which is only $90 for one license. However, some software sites say you need multiple licenses to run on multiple machines ($600+), but others don't have any info on licensing. Does anyone know anything about that? Thanks in advance for any help!
• minda: you can check the ownership of the site by doing a lookup at www.whois.net. Then, when you find that the site is registered to someone in Warsaw, Poland, you can make up your own mind about whether to trust them with your credit card info, and whether they are selling legitimate copies of software. I won't go into whether software for Windows is hideously overpriced, but will just raise the flag that if it doesn't work, you may be without recourse.
• Many thanks, deconstructo. I agree re: overpriced, as well as it'll most likely be more trouble than it's worth to order from these guys.