[TriLUG] [Very OT] AOL Broadband Problem

Ben Pitzer uncleben at mindspring.com
Mon Apr 14 00:55:09 EDT 2003


Andrew,

Actually, I'm familiar with this problem.  I'm surprised you haven't seen it
in the XP machines.  Your best bet is to download all of the security and
critical updates for the Win98 machine to a disk, install them on that box,
then try again to connect.  I found the problem while working on a contract
gig for some AOL customers, setting up a network.  Their second WinXP
machine wouldn't connect through the new Linksys router we got them.  Much
to my amazement, the first AOL tech that I talked to knew exactly what the
problem was, and told me how to fix it.  I did, and it worked just fine.
You might want to have the Win98 machine dialup, run Windows Update, then
try again via the broadband router.  Good luck!

Regards,
Ben Pitzer

---------------------------------------------------------------
Systems Administrator                   Tel:  919-287-5013
Durham RDC                              Cell: 919-368-2824
Road Runner                             Email: bpitzer at southeast.rr.com
                                        AIM: bpitzerRR





> -----Original Message-----
> From: trilug-admin at trilug.org [mailto:trilug-admin at trilug.org]On Behalf
> Of Andrew Perrin
> Sent: Sunday, April 13, 2003 10:22 PM
> To: trilug at trilug.org
> Subject: [TriLUG] [Very OT] AOL Broadband Problem
>
>
> Apologies in advance - I know it's way off topic.
>
> I'm trying to get my in-laws' place in Carrboro set up right. They've got
> three computers running various Windowses (1 XP Pro, 1 XP Home, 1 98SE)
> and an SMC broadband router that connects them all to AOL broadband via
> TWC cablemodem.
>
> The two XP machines work fine. The 98 machine doesn't - it's networked
> fine (can ping and share folders w/ the other two on the network and gets
> its IP via DHCP from the broadband router), but it hangs while signing on
> to AOL at "Step 3: Requesting Network Attention."  AOL tech support is
> useless; they just say to reinstall the software, which does no good.
>
> So I'm hoping someone here knows what might be going on. The computer is
> somewhat old - I built it for them around 1997, and it was already
> obsolete then. It's a Pentium 266, 128MB RAM, with plenty of hard disk
> space. The ethernet is an onboard SiS900 chip, which seems to work fine.
>
> Thanks for any advice.
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> Andrew J Perrin - http://www.unc.edu/~aperrin
> Assistant Professor of Sociology, U of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
> clists at perrin.socsci.unc.edu * andrew_perrin (at) unc.edu
>
> _______________________________________________
> TriLUG mailing list
>     http://www.trilug.org/mailman/listinfo/trilug
> TriLUG Organizational FAQ:
>     http://www.trilug.org/~lovelace/faq/TriLUG-faq.html
>




More information about the TriLUG mailing list