XP SP2 & internet connection

[Westway]

Loaded XP SP2 on my PCV RS404 & it will now not find any servers when connected to the internet.
(even when I try to create a new internet account from a CD supplied by an ISP)

Any ideas?

Internet connections are working fine on my Packard Bell with SP2!!

[kee-lo_]

If you have a firewall running go to the security centre and turn off the firewall.

[Westway]

I had already tried turning off the firewall.

As far as I can see my dial up and browser settings are identical to those on my Packard Bell, which work fine.

I can dial up & connect to an ISP but my browser & Outlook express will not access any services there.

[kee-lo_]

Check in Tools > Internet Options > Connections and Proxy Servers.
Go to your ISPs site and check that the IP is identical.

[Westway]

ISP recomends 'automatic' settings for DNS & proxy servers.

I have tried settings quoted for non windows OS but still did not work.

[TygerTyger]

I don't think non-Windows OS settings would help. You may have to search around a bit or call their tech support but ISP's always give details for the manual settings for Windows just in case the automatic settings go funky.

[kee-lo_]

Yes usually it's in the support section of their site.

[vaiodon]

The dialler properties should be left as automatic for DNS, etc.

Have you got a another firewall installed prior to/in addition to the Windows Firewall installed by SP2? If so check it's not blocking anything especially DNS traffic.

I've seen problems with DNS that result in no HTTP connections - DNS does the www.blah.blah to 192.168.1.2 type name to IP address lookups in the background.

Try this URL

http://195.2.39.30

If you get through to Club Vaio then it's DNS that's causing the grief. WinXP has a client cacheing service for DNS that could be erroneously disabled (XP would cache, wouldn't it, just to be economical with all that query traffic).

In a command window ([Start]/[Run]/type - cmd) enter 'ipconfig /all' - the command output should list (at least) the following entries for a PPP dial-up adapter:

IP Address (your PC's IP address)
Default Gateway (the remote system that routes all your traffic to the wider Internet)
DNS Servers (usually at least two)

If you can ping the gateway and the dns servers (type 'ping a.b.c.d', where a.b.c.d are the numerical addresses above) then dns resolution is likely the problem.

Type 'net start' in that command window - the output should include DNS Client - the cacheing service.

Come back on that and let's see if we can help some more...