[Bob-san]

You could backup the registry... if it crashes, it should keep most or all of the important stuff. Still, reinstalling will be basically required.

[redsniper]

I've already formatted the drive to one partition and reinstalled XP, now I'm just reinstalling drivers and such.

[redsniper]

Now I'm trying to get my laptop to connect to my desktop since I downloaded a bunch of drivers and such in anticipation of Teh Format™, but I can't get the buggers to communicate. The ethernet controller on my laptop is being gay retarded. It says limited or no connectivity unless I manually give it an IP address (which is the wrong way to fix this anyways), and whether it has connectivity or not, I get a "You might not have permission to use this network resource" error when I try to access it from my desktop.

I ran the network wizard on both computers. They have the same workgroup name, the cat-5 is plugged in, I have folder and printer sharing turned on, I have folders actually set to be shared. When I try to repair the connection on the laptop end it hangs on "Renewing IP Address".

So, wtf?

EDIT: and I updated the drivers for the networking... thing on my laptop.

[Scuddie]

Get a Cat5e crossover cable.

Or a router would help too...

[redsniper]

Wait, so I can't just hook one computer straight to the other? I distinctly remember hooking this laptop up to a friend's laptop (to give  him FS2, in fact) and it worked just fine, and he had a Mac!

[Scuddie]

No, because the Tx and Rx lines need to be crossed over so the two network adapters don't see Tx to Tx and Rx to Rx.  Hence the name Crossover cable

[redsniper]

Bah! Fine... and I guess Mac OS can somehow magically sort it out w/o a crossover cable but Windows can't.

[Scuddie]

It's in the hardware, not the OS.  He probably used a crossover cable and you didnt realize it (who would?).

[redsniper]

Actually, you know what? I'm using a different cable now than I was then.
This one has patch cable written on it and I'll bet that one was a crossover cable. I'll see if I can find it tomorrow and try this again.

Thanks.

[redsniper]

Alright, I found what I'm almost certain is the cable I used that time with the Mac<--->PC connection, and it behaves the same way. Limited or no connectivity, hangs on renewing IP address.

So this means that-
1. It's a different cable (likely)
2. It's the same cable and it somehow worked then but doesn't now (highly unlikely)
3. It's the same cable and it isn't working now because something else is wrong. (sort of likely since this is a dell laptop)

Just out of curiousity (for now), if/when I go out and buy a crossover cable and this still doesn't work, what then?

[redsniper]

Alright, I found a little Linksys workgroup router, which I have used to connect two computers in the past, and this still isn't working. I managed to get the connection on the laptop end to say 'connected,' while on the desktop end it only said 'enabled' and would say that the IP address couldn't be renewed when I tried to repair it. Now the laptop end hangs up on acquiring network address again.

Oh and I've tried many different combinations of the three ethernet cables I have here now. Is there anyway to tell a regular cable from a crossover cable? Should it even matter with the router? Should I look for better drivers?

[redsniper]

I've restored my laptop to factory settings using some crazy utility that Dell puts on their laptops nowadays. I'm still getting the same problem, "Limited or no connectivity," but now I know it's not because of me uninstalling something vital on the laptop.

I don't even need to network these two computers since I have an external hard drive, but I just want to get this solved as a matter of principle. I can't find any good reason why this shouldn't work, so I want to find out what's wrong and get it working.

[Scuddie]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethernet_crossover_cable

Look toward the bottom, automatic crossover NICs.  It is very possible that newer macs have this technology.  Hell, I didn't even know it existed.  Learn something new every day .

Anyway, look at the first picture in detail.  If it's a crossover, the two ends of your cat5e should have their wiring order look very different, as illustrated.  If they are identical, it is a standard patch cable.

[redsniper]

Two of my cables have ends that look the same and one has the wires arranged differently. On the one arranged differently there aren't any brown or orange wires, they're just white.

Now, I've got both patch cables (with ends that look the same) plugged into my little router and one plugged into each computer involved. So wiring is good and the network card drivers are good, but I'm still getting the same problems. Could it be a hardware problem since the laptop seems to have no connection no matter what I do? I can't think of what else to mess with.

[Scuddie]

It sounds to me that there is a problem with the NIC.  The router should assign an IP whether or not your other PC is connected.  To make sure it isn't a hardware problem, I would grab a recent LiveCD and try to see if you can get an IP in a virtual linux environment.  If you can't get one there either, the odds are something is wrong on the physical layer.

[redsniper]

Sounds like a good idea. I just finished updating Windows all the way, which hasn't had any effect on this problem.

EDIT: Well, using Knoppix 3.8 I can't get any kind of network going. It's entirely possible that I'm just not doing it right, but I remember it being ridiculously easy the last time I did it two years ago. So I guess there's something wrong with my hardware.

[redsniper]

So I abandoned the network approach and just transferred stuff via external hard drive. I've gotten things more or less back up to snuff (less, I think since I haven't reinstalled FSO yet). Just today I decided to install something I had overlooked: abitEQ, a voltage/temperature/fan speed monitor analogous to good ol' asusprob.

So I install this bad boy and my system speaker starts making alarm noises. I go to see what the problem is and it turns out that the DDR2 voltage is higher than it should be. I promptly shut my compy down just in case this was something serious, then booted back up into the BIOS setup to see what the deal was.

I haven't overclocked anything on this computer yet and I haven't adjusted any voltages; everything is set to Default or Auto or an equivalent setting. The hardware monitoring part of the BIOS (as well as abitEQ) reports the voltage to be something around 2.3-2.4V, while the part where I can actually set the voltage only says 1.8V. So why am I getting 2.4V when it's set to 1.8?

[Bob-san]

Sometimes it is wrong--quite often actually. I'd say don't worry about it...

[redsniper]

Well, I wouldn't except for the annoying alarm sound. That and the fact that I'm kinda out of my league here and I really don't want to fry any of my new shiny stuff.

[CP5670]

Yeah, I think the program is just misreporting the voltage. 2.4V is very high, especially for the Micron chips, and I'm not sure if the memory would boot up at all at that setting. See if there is some option to turn off the alarms in that program.

This sort of thing is also often solved by a BIOS update, so check if there is anything available for that board.

Not sure what to say about your network problem. I didn't have much trouble setting up one around my house, but I don't know a whole lot about networks.