Bizarre connection problems

Good people,,

Having a most annoying issue with my pc / net connection.

My ISP is Be, I'm running vista premium 32 plenty of ram, disk space etc. on a home network with a hub (8 port, 5 used) connected to the be-box on port 1. The machine in question is connected to the hub, not directly to the bebox.
I dont think it's relevant but I have the bebox wifi witched off and a seperate wireless bridge connected to my network for wifi purposes.

The problem:

On a regular basis, IE7, FireFox (1.5.0.2), Windows Live Messenger, Windows Mail -> are all unable to connect to the internet - Firefox does not even bring up the login-in screen for the bebox. However, the really bizzare thing is - Opera still connects no problems, both to the bebox and right through to the interet. Pinging both the bebox and various other sites works fine (from command prompt). Other machines on the network all connect fine (they are all on XP:SP2, and are wired/wirless).


I've tried....
restarting the computer - no luck,
repairing the connection through the windows utility thingy - no luck,

The only thing that works is a system restore - which I am by now thoroughly sick of doing.

:cry:

Now, much though I like Opera, I need my windows-mail and firefox. Has anyone heard of anything similar, or even better, does anyone know the magic button I can push to make it all better?

Regards

Eco

What happens if you 'ping www.bbc.co.uk' from a command prompt?
Is it any different if you 'ping 212.58.226.232' from a command prompt?
(Both excluding the quotes).

In reply to:

---

does anyone know the magic button I can push to make it all better?

---

the Symantec Removal Tool usually solves this type of thing

Someone on a different forum suggested disabling IPv6 so I've done that and, so far, the connection has stayed reliable - at least after the first re-boot, which is a notable improvement!

@adebov - I've not tried the pings you suggested yet - if it goes dubious on me again I will do so and post the results back here.

@yarwell - I have the misfortune to be running McAfee at present so I can't blame Symantec this time, however if McAfee continues to chew up all my cpu for hours on end at seemingly random points of the day - it's getting dumped and I'm going back to Avast lol.

Thanks for your replies both

Eco

Edited by EcoTedmundo (Fri 08-Jun-07 19:20:38)

In reply to:

---

I have the misfortune to be running McAfee at present so I can't blame Symantec this time

---

same rubbish, different name.

Bah!

It went all wrong on me again, I tried the pings from the command prompt and they were both successfull - 100ms average on the www version and 27ms average on the direct IP version.
Opera was still working fine, all the others stuck in an un-connected limbo.

Another system restore and it's back up and running ok.

I'm starting to wonder if it is McAfee messing me up as I have been killing off one of it's processes - mcmscvc.exe (it goes nuts and chews up hours of cpu time) - including disabling it's service.... hmmm maybe it is time to go back to avast.

Eco

Well there's nothing inherently wrong with McAfee.
msmcsvc.exe on my machine is taking up 1,420K of memory and 0% CPU.

As for the ping using the url and direct IP, they should take about the same time. Here's mine: -

C:\Documents and Settings\Adrian>ping www.bbc.co.uk

Pinging www.bbc.net.uk [212.58.227.72] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 212.58.227.72: bytes=32 time=30ms TTL=246
Reply from 212.58.227.72: bytes=32 time=30ms TTL=246
Reply from 212.58.227.72: bytes=32 time=31ms TTL=246
Reply from 212.58.227.72: bytes=32 time=30ms TTL=246

Ping statistics for 212.58.227.72:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 30ms, Maximum = 31ms, Average = 30ms

C:\Documents and Settings\Adrian>ping 212.58.227.72

Pinging 212.58.227.72 with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 212.58.227.72: bytes=32 time=30ms TTL=246
Reply from 212.58.227.72: bytes=32 time=31ms TTL=246
Reply from 212.58.227.72: bytes=32 time=29ms TTL=246
Reply from 212.58.227.72: bytes=32 time=29ms TTL=246

Ping statistics for 212.58.227.72:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 29ms, Maximum = 31ms, Average = 29ms

It does sound like either a DNS issue, or something on your PC is interrupting comms.

Are you totally up to date on McAfee updates & definitions?
When did you last do a full system scan?
Does Windows Defender (or another similar product) show up any problems.
If all these seem OK, it may be time to disconnect from t'internet, go into safe mode, uninstall & re-install McAfee.

Just tried the ping again whilst everything is working normally and both versions took exactly the same time - 111ms average. The reason for a difference last time was probably that I pinged the web address and the IP address exactly as you had typed it (not thinking it through) this time I pinged the web address and then the IP address indicated from the previous ping.

There is a known issue with the mcmscsvc.exe and cpu hogging - well according to a few places I found on google anyway, most of the time it's fine but sometimes it just goes nuts and will stay around the 40%+ mark for hours on end. Currently running at 44%, 18 minutes cpu spent, 8m memory, 60k page faults, 4o million i/o reads, 27million i/o writes

All the definitions / updates are up-to-date.
Full system scan run last night - only found 8 cookies it didn't like.
Defender reports everything ship shape on a quickscan - running a full scan now, any differences I'll post back. - edit - full/deep scan reports all clean (1.5 hours and 1.3million items later lol)

Eco

Edited by EcoTedmundo (Sun 10-Jun-07 11:25:12)

Hmm, this looks suspiciously like what I am having. I don't have to do a system restore though. A reboot fixes it..

http://bbs.adslguide.org.uk/showthreaded.php?Cat=&Board=multiuser&Number=3026685&page=0&view=expanded&sb=5&o=0&fpart=

I think it might be something to do with ICS which I have only just started using due to a new WIFI connection, someone on another forum suggesting dechecking ICS in the LAN adapter when it happens again. So I will try that next time I mysteriously lose connectivity.

Mike

Edited by deleted (Sun 10-Jun-07 21:49:08)

@Stormy.... when your problem occurs, are there other machines one the network, and if so, can they still access the net without problems?

I don't think this is the same problem - although I have also experienced that one - when it happened to me, I tended to find I was just my machine messed up - the others worked ok.

With my problem is definately ICS which is the issue, if I use the Squeezebox wirelessly (even though its not on the internet) for a while and I come back to the PC I have lost internet connectivity.

If I then disable ICS on the LAN I get my Internet back, the trouble is I can then no longer enable ICS at all because I lose the net again.

Does anyone know whats going on there and if there is a way to re-enable ICS and keep the net without rebooting?

ta

My money is on the DNS Client Service failing - try restarting it

I thought that but I can still ping both hostnames and IPs, so I doubt with DNS down I could do that.

What happens if you flush the DNS resolver cache before doing the pings?

ipconfig /flushdns

I will try this next time it fails, its annoying because it failed last night and I did a few things, disabled ICS (and re-enabled) and it was still not working, so I disabled ICS again and the net connection worked.

Then I loaded the Metric values as per your other post, and a few mins later windows seemed to "refresh" something because the screen flashed into "Windows Classic" theme before going back into "Aero".

After this point I could seem to use the net connection again with ICS re-enabled. So I need to see if it drops after I use the wireless connection for a while again. I had my Squeezebox on for a few minutes after all this happened but it was only on for a few and I am not sure thats long enough to do the "damage".

Later tonight while I am having my dinner (and am at home) I will put the SB on and listen to music for an hour or so then go back on the PC and see if the connection has dropped.

If it has I will try the ipconfig /flushdns and see what happens. I will then report my findings.

Thanks for all the help.

Mike

Right, when it did it this evening, I tried ipconfig /flushdns and nothing changed. The ping of hostnames and IPs still worked.

The only way I could get my webbrowser working again was to disable ICS on the LAN again.



Does this look wrong:

Windows IP Configuration

Host Name . . . . . . . . . . . . : Mike-Vista
Primary Dns Suffix . . . . . . . :
Node Type . . . . . . . . . . . . : Hybrid
IP Routing Enabled. . . . . . . . : No
WINS Proxy Enabled. . . . . . . . : No

Wireless LAN adapter Wireless Networking Connection:

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Realtek RTL8187 Wireless 802.11g 54Mbps U
SB 2.0 Network Adapter
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : xx-xx-xx-xx-xx-xx
DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : No
Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes
IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.1(Preferred)
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . :
NetBIOS over Tcpip. . . . . . . . : Enabled

Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection:

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Realtek RTL8169/8110 Family PCI Gigabit E
thernet NIC (NDIS 6.0)
Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : xx-xx-xx-xx-xx-xx
DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : No
Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes
IPv4 Address. . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.2(Preferred)
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.1.1
DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : 212.50.160.100
213.249.130.100
NetBIOS over Tcpip. . . . . . . . : Enabled

My ethernet modem is connected to the Realtek Gigabit Lan with an IP of 192.168.1.1

The Squeezebox connects wirelessly to the PC via the WIFI adapter and with ICS can access the Internet via the LAN and ethernet modem.

I am pulling my hair out with this now. If I use the SB for a while, the internet on the main machine just seems to die yet I can still ping and programs already running that don't have to make a connection continue to do so.

Thanks,

Mike

Edited by deleted (Tue 12-Jun-07 20:33:36)