Help needed

[Seaking]

I'm going down to my buddies place this weekend to try and help with their problem so I'm
after a little help.
Here's what I know

Two computers, one desktop and one laptop
Brand new router L something or other Lsys maybe
Desktop PC connected by normal cable to the router
Desktop is running Vista 64 bit and laptop 32bit.part of my problem why I can't help them over the phone
is I've never even seen Vista on a machine.
Laptop connect via wireless.

Problem

If the laptop tries to connect to the internet on wireless it knocks out the internet connection for the desktop
The desktop is making a "ghost IP" (not to sure what that is) Even when he tries to connect with the PC 5 out of
10 times he can't connect because of this "ghost ip"


So far 3 techy guys have looked at it and can't figure it out, I'm hoping one of the gurus here can maybe
shine a light as to what might be happening. In my experience something that seems so major is nearly always
something very simple.

Any help is appreciated

[DaveB]

No help so far and only me which'll probably make things worse First off.. I've only ever seen Vista Home Premium (it came on my daughters laptop). She can connect to my network at any time (the rest of the network is XP in varying degrees of update) on her laptop and not cause an issue.. via wireless. I have a slightly complicated setup here which in all honesty surprises me as it all works and with only the minimum of input from me I have 4 pc's that connect to the router via wireless.. Helen's (my daughters) laptop can connect via wireless.. she has another pc that is connected via a switchbox.. my office pc is connected via the same switchbox and finally, the pub till's talk to the office pc via the switch from a Netgear hub down in the bar. Yeh.. bonkers innit
Worthy of note (again) is that the only Vista pc is my daughters laptop.

Now.. to confuse things, the MASTER pc on my network is connected wirelessly and it's an old one I rarely turn on anymore. I had cause a few weeks ago to start looking at 'event logs' and it seems that the 2 pc's I now use most of the time spend a lot of time arguing over who is the master on the network. The truth of the matter is that neither of them are :roll: Confused.. yep, so was I. Hopefully, Ben will pop up with a few words of wisdom soon. At least he knows what he's talking about and he does this sort of thing for a living ;-) It COULD be how the network is setup.. ad-hoc or whatever the other one is (they should both be the same I guess) but I'd have thought his tech support would've sussed this before now. In the absence of any real knowledge.. I wait for Ben ;-)

ATB

DaveB :tab:

[Seaking]

Appreciate the input Dave, I still think this issue is something so simple to solve somewhere. Tis why
I posted here, there's so many people who might know something I don't.

[Chris Sykes]

Could be worth checking if there is any static assigned I.P's in the router and also check each switch for DHCP allocations as well.

[TSR2]

As above, sounds like an IP address clash. Devices on the same network can't have the same IP. ;-)

[DaveB]

Agree with that 100 percent. However, I've not known a situation where 2 systems have had the same IP and one can 'bully' the other one into relinquishing a connection :think: Would Windows not come up sharpish and warn the user as such?? Perhaps if the IP's are allocated at the router, this may not happen :think: Certainly one to check though ;-)

ATB

DaveB :tab:

[TSR2]

I was thinking if one had been staticly configured for some reason in the past and it clashed with the address the router was trying to hand out.... who knows

[DaveB]

That's so true mate. It only takes one small thing to make a network work but equally so, it only takes one small thing to make one fail. I'd have thought that the router software would auto-configure that poor chaps setup but like you say, if the first one was already setup, it could throw a spanner in the works. My 4 pc's in the toyroom were all manually configured (10.0.0.1 - 10.0.0.2 e t c) as the original network was ethernet (10-base T). I see lights on the hub but how many are still connected is anyones guess Since I went wireless, they all see one another and play nicely (most of the time) and importantly, they all go online when required.

ATB

DaveB :tab:

[Chris Sykes]

The bulling off the network was the reason i thought one IP could be reserved and when the laptop comes onto the network it picks this up. It maybe worthwile trying to set static I.P's on all your PC's etc to see if the problem disapears.

[Seaking]

Thanks for the tips guys, hopefully I'll figure it out for 'em.