Win98/DSL/Router--how do I connect

[edward stamm]

I just got DSL, and I have three computers. I've got two connected with no problems. (One is connected to the router wirelessly, and the other is connected via an ethernet.) Here is my problem with the third:
- The computer is Win98SE
- It is directly connected to a Linksys wireless router via an ethernet cable
- This computer USED to be networked to another computer via this ethernet port, but this is no longer needed. (The former connection worked fine.)
- The connection looks solid, and all necessary lights light up.

After I connected the ethernet cable to the Win98SE computer, I'm not sure what I need to do. When I pull up IE or Netscape, the internet is not found. I think I probably need to have the computer recognize the 'new' network connection (and 'forget' the older connection), but I'm not sure how to do this. I've played around with the networking settings in 'my computer--control panel--network', but to no avail.

I have not installed the DSL software that I got from my DSL phone company on this computer. This didn't seem to be necessary with one of the computers (which is running XP). I'd like to avoid doing this because running this software seemed to completely wipe out my dial-up modem in the computer I DID run this on, and I'd like to keep the dial-up modem available in this WIn98SE computer. However, I'll run it if it has to be done.

Any suggestions would be helpful.

[degsy]

You should check the settings with the other computers.

If you have a Router then you are probably using DHCP.
This mean that in your Network setup you can set it to Automatically detect.
No need to have an IP Address input.

[edward stamm]

Do I go into 'my computer--control-panel--network'? If so, I don't see anything to do with 'automatically detect'. When I go into 'my computer--control panel--internet options' do I try to connect to the internet via a "LAN"? I've actually tried that with several different permutations of the options, but nothing workds. Interestingly, when I attempt to connect to a web site, the lights on the router flash as though it is *trying* to connect, but I still get dns errors.

[Miz]

First, reboot and see if Windows can pick up what it needs from the router.

If that doesn't work, see if you can ping the router. Go to Start>Run, type in "command" (without the quotes), click OK. In the resulting window, type "ping 192.168.1.1" (without the quotes), press the Enter key. It will ping four times. If you get something other than "Reply from" followed by a bunch of numbers, the computer isn't communicating with the router at all. That could mean a bad cable, a bad card or the cable is plugged into the wrong router port (if there's more than one port, that is). The port on multi-port Linksys router located right next to where the DSL modem plugs in is disabled when a modem is plugged into it.

If it is getting a reply, go to Control Panel>Internet Options>Connections tab>Setup button and run through that wizard, telling it to use a LAN connection to make sure the software knows to look to the ethernet card for its internet connection.

If still not connecting, right click on Network Neighborhood, left click on Properties. Find the entry that starts with TCP/IP and is followed by the name of the ethernet card. (There will be two entries for the card, only one will have the TCP/IP prefix). Double click it and make sure the boxes for obtaining the IP and DNS automatically are checked.

[edward stamm]

THANKS! The problem was that my TCP/IP settings was not allowing automatic IP assignment. Clicking that, then re-running the Internet Options/LAN connection wizard did the trick!