Help ! Windows 7 - no internet, network OK

I have a self-built PC based on an Asus PK-5E motherboard and a 2.4 gigahertz Intel Core2 Quad Q6600 processor with 4GB of RAM. All has been working fine with Windows XP, but now I'm trying to install Windows 7 Professional 64-bit, and I'm having problems.

I have installed Windows 7 on a partition on one of my drives, and I've set it so that it will dual boot. Windows 7 installed OK with no errors, but when it boots I can't access the internet (there's a little yellow triangle on the network icon). I can see and access all the other PC's in the network.

The PC is set up with an IP address of 192.168.1.41, which is obtained by DHCP from the DrayTek 2820 ethernet router (IP bound to MAC address). When I look at the settings in Windows 7, it all looks OK.....

PC address 192.168.1.41
Address Mask 255.255.255.0
Gateway Address 192.168.1.1
DNS Addresses 217.169.20 20 217.169.20.21 (obtained from the router)

I can pull up the router's web page OK, but I can't resolve any URL's. Windows 7 diagnostics says that there is a problem accessing the DNS.

I've downloaded the latest 64-bit Windows driver for the Marvell Yukon 88E8056 PCDI-E gigabit IP controller in the PC.

Any ideas ? Without an internet connection, diagnosis is tricky !

Oh, and there's no other programs (including virus checkers or firewalls) installed yet. Just a naked Windows 7 installation.

Edited by deleted (Mon 16-Nov-09 14:08:27)

OK, it appears that Windows 7 is slightly plagued by internet access problems, so you might want to take note of how I fixed this (all Googled by the way, I'm taking no credit)......

In Windows 7, click on Start

then in the search box at the bottom, type cmd but do not hit enter !

Then hit the CTRL-SHIFT-ENTER keys simultaneously.

A box will come up asking if you want to run this program, reply YES.

This gives a command box with Admin rights.


Then at the prompt, type in netsh int ip reset [Enter]

When the prompt reappears, close the box.

This has worked for most people. It didn't for me. I also had to set my network card to use the OpenDNS settings

208.67.222.222
208.67.220.220

and then it worked. I'd already tried to use manual DNS settings before, and it didn't work.

Edited by deleted (Mon 16-Nov-09 15:27:56)

As a side note since it's fixed now but one thing that springs to mind with the original info is that the DNS server should be set to 192.168.1.1 so it can let the router handle the automatic DNS still. That might be worth a go if you get fed up with OpenDNS.

or just leave the DNS server to be set by DHCP which is the default.

In reply to a post by yarwell:

or just leave the DNS server to be set by DHCP which is the default.

It was - the numbers quoted were the settings obtained via DHCP from the router at 192.168.1.1. The IP address of the PC was bound to a MAC address in the router, so was always given the same one. Even though the PC was being given the DNS server IP's via DHCP (the ones in the router are AAISP server DNS IPs), the computer was not using them.

Edited by deleted (Wed 18-Nov-09 08:08:52)