TCP/IP not detected - the whole post

[A Murricun]

Please ignore previous post, which was trashed by some combination of Ezboard, MSN-crippled IE or Windoze XT.

I recently tried to install a wireless modem and the setup software pretty well trashed my system, apparently due to some damage done by another earlier installation - I'll name names later, maybe.

Well, I must have set a record for re-installing Windoze over the past few days, and that has cleared up some other issues, thanks for small favors.  But even though everything looks OK, and I have been through the 7 step process spelled out in Windows Help, I can't get my old dialup connection to work again.  I can dial up and handshake with my ISP, but neither browser nor email client can connect.  A third app reports "No TCP/IP connection detected".  (I'm using another computer and connection to post this.)

One anomaly that may help a guru to help me is that when doing step 4 "Install the Windows 98 TCP/IP protocol", I add the client, adapter and protocol, but, unlike all the examples in all the docs I have read (and that's a lot in the past week or so), the box shows the protocol all by itself:

"Protocol TCP/IP"

Instead of:

"Protocol TCP/IP -> Dialup adapter"

Is that a cause or an effect?

Unlike Mr. Cressey's irreproducible problem, this one is all too reproducible.  I cant make it go away.  Any help will be greatly appreciated.  

Maybe I need an 12 step program  rather than a 7 step one?

[Jeremy Singer]

Take a look in control panel/hardware.
Is it all there?  Does some of it have an exclamation point (there but with a problem?)
If it does, try uninstalling the hardware and reinstalling.
This guess is based on not seing tcp/IP with the dialup adapter.
If you are talking ethernet, same applies.
Don't know whether this is your problem, but one place to look.

[The Gorn]

In Windows there is the concept of "binding" a protocol (TCP/IP) to an adapter (network card, or in this case, dial up adapter.)

Again, I don't have a Windows 98 installation in front of me to guide you through this. But in order to wind up with the protocol ==> adapter syntax you want to see, you do need to do the adding of the protocol and the adapter in a very, very specific order and way. Adapter is the piece of hardware, protocol is the method used to communicate. It sounds like the adapter (dial up) is not connected to any protocol.

This is probably why you're not able to use TCP/IP aware apps, but you can connect.

This page looks like it was written just for your situation:

www.ticon.net/setup/w98.html

[A Murricun]

Earlier, GB suggested using IPCONFIG to analyze my configuration, and I did so and it looked strange.

Now a new development - IPCONFIG reports "Cannot read IP configuration".  I'm trying to find where it is trying to read it from.  Doesn't seem to be a file, must be buried in the registry.

Any ideas?

[The Gorn]

Have you Googled for this stuff? The following link describes how dial up networking can be removed and reinstalled.

support.microsoft.com/def...us;286748&

And a question: have you *formatted* your hard drive before reinstalling Windows? The Windows 98 installation will go out and grab settings from the existing installation, including networking and installed applications. IE, unless you format the HD first you're just cloning the old problems.

[Jeremy Singer]

Doing the "remove hardware" and reinstalling often has the same effect without the drastic side effects.

[The Gorn]

The problem seems to be that his TCP/IP stack was broken by the wireless card setup software, and removing and reinstalling just the dial up adapter probably won't do anything until the issue with TCP/IP is solved. I recommended earlier to him in a private email that he remove and reinstall TCP/IP and the adapter from Windoze, but that apparently didn't get him past this. The article I linked above seemed most relevant to fixing the missing TCP/IP configuration on Windows 98 issue.

Without being able to be right in front of his system and see what's actually happening, those are the options I can see that make sense...

[A Murricun]

GB, many thanks.

I never did "re-install" Windoze - I chickened out.  I just ran Setup, and I'm not sure you could re-install on a blank system from the CD Dell supplied.  And Dell's curry-breath "support" guy never did call me back.

Even though I googled, I didn't see that article.

The problem turned out to be in the registry - one of the keys was missing, and some of the others were funny-looking.

All the articles I found basically told you how to set up if everything went OK.  Joseph Weizenbaum's ghost is chortling "If OK, then OK".

Now to that other windmill, the wireless hookup.

[David Cressey]

One of the things I did with the family computer was to keep around the CD and diskette that came with the machine out of the box.  One of the things you can do with that combo is to reset the hard disk to be exactly like it was when it was new.  

After that,  I repreated the installation of Windows ME over Windows 98.  That got me out of the woods in the last problem I never did run to ground.  It also cured a bunch of things that had been wrong with my machine.  

I'm a "keeper".  I tend to never throw away the stuff a new product came with.  It's usually just obsessive compulsive,  but sometimes it saves my bacon.

[A Murricun]

Yes.  As GB mentioned, I could have re-formatted the disk and started over, and as I say, I chickened out.  Not sure I could reconstruct my system, and it would take a long time to plan and execute if I thought I could.  Neatnik I am not.

I, too am a pack rat.   I never throw anything out.

Runs in the family.  Many winters ago, my Dad replaced the side-arm water heater in our flat with a brand-new 30 gallon automatic water heater.  But he cleaned up the old one and tucked it in the corner of a lean-to out back.  Five years after Dad died, the tenant's water heater sprang a leak, and I retrieved the "spare" from under the scrap of tarp - it wasn't even dusty.