Calling All Techies!

[SweetErika]

On Sunday, we switched out an older computer that was acting as a router for a newer one because the hard drive was starting to go. Hubby put a new network card in the laptop and got everything configured in Linux.

The problems I've discovered so far:
As soon as the network was up and running, I started having problems with certain sites on my laptop (which is running Vista Home ). Gmail and google are the main ones, but I've also had issues with Zap2it.com's tv listings (and forums, when I tried to see if others were complaining about problems) and a few other sites sporadically.

Gmail is giving me the "Oops...the system was too busy to perform your operation (error code 007). Please try again in a few seconds" message more often than not, and I'm not getting some of my email.

Sometimes when I try to do google searches or click on the results, it loads to a blank page. It says 'Done' in Firefox's status bar, but nothing's showing up.

When dealing with the aforementioned sites, the status bar says 'Waiting for (site), and then I'm getting the following message/error periodically:

The connection was reset

The connection to the server was reset while the page was loading.
* The site could be temporarily unavailable or too busy. Try again in a few moments.
* If you are unable to load any pages, check your computer's network connection.
* If your computer or network is protected by a firewall or proxy, make sure that Firefox is permitted to access the Web.

Plus, all pages seem to be loading slower than before.


Here's what I've done and know so far:

-I've cleared my cookies, cache/temp internet files, and restarted my browser and computer multiple times to no avail.

-I have the same issues on both firefox and IE.

-All of these sites work perfectly in both firefox and IE on our other computers running XP and Linux.

-The router is showing everything's fine, and we have reason to believe it since our other computers aren't having problems. However, these issues DID start when we changed this hardware.

-There doesn't seem to be a problem with any of our firewalls. They had the same settings as they did with the old router when the problems started, and changing those settings to be more permissive hasn't helped.

-I've done virus and adware/spyware scans. AVG came up clean, and Adaware caught some tracking cookies (then cleaned them up), and Spybot showed nothing.

- I'd like to go to XP on this computer, but am resisting because I don't want to wipe everything/start from scratch unnecessarily.

I know that's a lot of info, and I may not have used the correct terminology for some things, but does anyone have any ideas on what could be going on or what I can try to at least fix the problems with gmail and google? I'll answer any questions to the best of my ability.

Thanks in advance for reading, and any help you can offer!

 

[Marisia]

It does sound like a compatability problem. Vista has good aspects, but it certainly doesn't play well with all other software or hardware.
From what I read, you are using your other computer as the router or is a router connected to that computer? You may need to go the manufacturer website and look for an updated Vista-compatible driver for it.
Other than looking for updated drivers, it could be a Vista-Linux incompatability issue, of which I'm not familiar with a fix. Try searching PC World and other online tech magazines to see if there are other issues. (there are MANY with Vista. Thanks, Microsoft)
Good luck!

 

[mjl2010]

I was a techie a while back, almost ten years now since I went a different direction.

Is that the only machine running vista? I haven't worked with that yet but I've heard plenty of complaints about it not playing well.

One thing I'd try and maybe you've done this. Go to the Windows folder and look for a folder called temp. Delete absolutely everything in there. Make sure all programs are closed before you do.

Disconnect from the network. (unplug cable or pull card if wireless.)

Reboot.

Plug in card or cable to establish connection. Let Vista discover network and settle in.

Reboot.

Give it a try.

MJL

 

[SweetErika]

Marisia, yes, we're using an older laptop running linux as a router. Before Sunday, we were using an older desktop running linux as the router. We have a desktop (switches between XP and linux) wired to the router, and two laptops (his with linux, mine with vista) running on wireless, that's obviously connected to the router.

I was a techie a while back, almost ten years now since I went a different direction.

Is that the only machine running vista? I haven't worked with that yet but I've heard plenty of complaints about it not playing well.

One thing I'd try and maybe you've done this. Go to the Windows folder and look for a folder called temp. Delete absolutely everything in there. Make sure all programs are closed before you do.

Disconnect from the network. (unplug cable or pull card if wireless.)

Reboot.

Plug in card or cable to establish connection. Let Vista discover network and settle in.

Reboot.

Give it a try.

MJL

I think we tried that, but I'll have Hubby do it again when he gets home.

It probably IS a Vista issue, but the thing that kills me is our network is set up the same way it was when my computer was running fine (save for the new card and different computer for the router), and I'm only having trouble with selected sites. If it had something to do with settings or my vista pc in general, wouldn't I have trouble with more sites?

I don't know what technology gmail, google and the zap2it tv listings have in common, but I'm tempted to think that's the missing link.

 

[Weird Harold]

It probably IS a Vista issue, but the thing that kills me is our network is set up the same way it was when my computer was running fine (save for the new card and different computer for the router),...

A general rule of troubleshooting is to start looking at the point of last maintenance.

I'd replace the network card with a different brand/model to start with, and replace the laptop as a second choice.

 

[Bottomlover]

-I have the same issues on both firefox and IE.

-All of these sites work perfectly in both firefox and IE on our other computers running XP and Linux.

-The router is showing everything's fine, and we have reason to believe it since our other computers aren't having problems. However, these issues DID start when we changed this hardware.

-There doesn't seem to be a problem with any of our firewalls. They had the same settings as they did with the old router when the problems started, and changing those settings to be more permissive hasn't helped.

I had very similar problems on my XP box when we installed a new router. The problem was the ZoneAlarm firewall. After trying different settings over about a week, I just stopped using it and turned the Windows firewall on. It still makes no sense to me. Try completely disabling the firewall in the Vista box.

 

[wally2450]

Vista take a ton of memory. I will assume that you have a sufficient amount.

 

[SweetErika]

I had very similar problems on my XP box when we installed a new router. The problem was the ZoneAlarm firewall. After trying different settings over about a week, I just stopped using it and turned the Windows firewall on. It still makes no sense to me. Try completely disabling the firewall in the Vista box.

I have Windows firewall on here, and have tried turning it off to no avail. I'm pretty sure Hubby tried turning our main firewall off, too. ETA: When we turned off the firewall on the router completely, it stopped our IP forwarding so we had no internet, period. He'll try to fiddle with it and isolate the firewall tonight.

We'll go through all the configurations later today/tonight. I need this fixed before he leaves tomorrow morning for the weekend, as I'm having trouble doing anything but staring at my gmail inbox at this point. I just re-confirmed it's not a gmail/google issue specifically - I have no trouble accessing my account from our other computers.

And, yes, wally, I have sufficient memory on this laptop. Vista definitely eats it up and slows to a crawl when I'm running multiple apps or have a lot of tabs open (I know FF has memory leaks, but am not willing to give up some of my beloved extensions to fix them).

We'll try your suggestions, but I'm completely open to additional ideas as well. Something has to work. Thanks to everyone who's taken the time to add their advice so far!

 

[luvtofly]

Do some looking around and you may find that the wireless card you bought may not support Vista correctly.

I had a problem with this at work when I started my new job, the boss went out and bought a wireless usb card (because they didn't want to run a network cable) and for the first few days I was fine, but after that the connection was intermitent and I was never able to truly connect to the internet. So one night at home I did some searching and found that the card was compatible with vista, but it wasn't compatible with the 64-bit version of vista that my pc is running.

Hope you get it sorted.

 

[kindashy]

I have to admit that I am confused about your network topology. For example, see attached file, this is my LAN. The only thing I did not include there are the OS that each device runs. In case of your problem, at this point I am not sure which device is doing what.

 

[Ezzy]

Just wondering out loud here, I don't have anything running Vista at the moment, but can't you add Gmail and the other site to your trusted sites in IE options/security settings?

The other thing I would try would be link through an anonamyser proxy, but not into the password side if you don't want to go that far.

 

[SweetErika]

With your suggestions, we've narrowed it down to a firewall conflict. I'm not exactly sure what Hubby did, but it allowed me to use gmail without incident most of the time.

ETA: We also read using an email client can resolve problems with gmail, so I'll likely start accessing my email through Thunderbird (unless someone has a better client in mind).

In the end, I may very well go to XP on this laptop, even though it will be a major hassle. I can always go back to Vista in the future, but we'll likely get a new laptop by then anyway.

 

[Bottomlover]

ETA: We also read using an email client can resolve problems with gmail, so I'll likely start accessing my email through Thunderbird (unless someone has a better client in mind).

Take a look at Eudora. http://www.eudora.com/
The sponsored version is not obnoxious, and there will soon be an open source version.

 

[SweetErika]

Take a look at Eudora. http://www.eudora.com/
The sponsored version is not obnoxious, and there will soon be an open source version.

I used Eudora waaaaay back when.

Is there a reason you like it better than other clients?

 

[Bottomlover]

I used Eudora waaaaay back when.

Is there a reason you like it better than other clients?

I haven't used another client for a long time, so I don't know if any of them have been "fixed". I went to Eudora because of the vulnerabilities of OE, and because I am on several mailing lists for my hobbies and Eudora is really slick at automatically sorting mail from different lists into different mailboxes.

 

[Ezzy]

Thunderbird are go!



Sorry showing my age again!

 

[SweetErika]

I haven't used another client for a long time, so I don't know if any of them have been "fixed". I went to Eudora because of the vulnerabilities of OE, and because I am on several mailing lists for my hobbies and Eudora is really slick at automatically sorting mail from different lists into different mailboxes.

I took this under advisement, but after reading the reviews and looking at the features, I decided to give thunderbird a shot. I'm in the process of setting up my accounts, and really like both the way it's configuring the settings for gmail for me (I have many accounts, so it's a major timesaver) and the fact that I can get helpful extensions for it (I'm totally an extension slut ). So far so good, but if I may check out Eudora anyway at some point.

I'm still having a lot of problems with gmail and google on and off now. Hubby has some ideas on other things to check out when he gets home on Monday, and I'll make a recovery disk this weekend so I can switch to XP if we can't get this worked out.

 

[LeoVirgo]

When only some sites will not load and it's not a router issue (i.e. only one PC has the problem), once you have ruled out security software/settings and DNS, MTU is a good place to continue your troubleshooting. I know you can change MTU on XP and I know it was impossible on Vista up to a short while ago.

Worth checking out if you can change MTU on Vista now. If so, lower your MTU on your Vista PC down to 1400 and try again.

The comment regarding wireless - Vista incompatibilities is spot on also, with a lot of unexplained behaviour being reported by a lot of the customers of the company I work for (I work for a business ISP). What brand card have you got installed? The speedtouch 121g USB wireless adaptor is apparently Vista friendly, so consider it (not an expensive substitute).

Hope my ramblings provide some help.

 

[M's girl]

deleted

 

[SweetErika]

When only some sites will not load and it's not a router issue (i.e. only one PC has the problem), once you have ruled out security software/settings and DNS, MTU is a good place to continue your troubleshooting. I know you can change MTU on XP and I know it was impossible on Vista up to a short while ago.

Worth checking out if you can change MTU on Vista now. If so, lower your MTU on your Vista PC down to 1400 and try again.

The comment regarding wireless - Vista incompatibilities is spot on also, with a lot of unexplained behaviour being reported by a lot of the customers of the company I work for (I work for a business ISP). What brand card have you got installed? The speedtouch 121g USB wireless adaptor is apparently Vista friendly, so consider it (not an expensive substitute).

Hope my ramblings provide some help.

I'll pass the MTU thing onto Hubby.

Maybe I was unclear. The card we put in the router is a WIRED Trendnet "32-bit Gigabit CardBus PC Card" (model TEG-PCSUSR). The box only says up to XP compatible, but the website swears it's Vista compatible. We do have a wireless router as well, but that's played perfectly well with Vista thus far.

M (*waves*), I just checked, and my computer's current on all of the Windows updates.

Thunderbird doesn't seem to be having trouble sending/receiving my email at all. The incoming port is 995 and the outgoing is 557, if that tells you anything.

 

[bighornedsatyr]

I took this under advisement, but after reading the reviews and looking at the features, I decided to give thunderbird a shot. I'm in the process of setting up my accounts, and really like both the way it's configuring the settings for gmail for me (I have many accounts, so it's a major timesaver) and the fact that I can get helpful extensions for it (I'm totally an extension slut ). So far so good, but if I may check out Eudora anyway at some point.

I wouldn't bother checking out Eudora. It's nice and all, but the new version is going to be based on Thunderbird anyway, so if you're happy with Thunderbird, I'd just stick with it. Eudora's likely to just slowly fade away. (And this is coming from a Pine user.)

 

[bighornedsatyr]

On Sunday, we switched out an older computer that was acting as a router for a newer one because the hard drive was starting to go. Hubby put a new network card in the laptop and got everything configured in Linux.

The problems I've discovered so far:
As soon as the network was up and running, I started having problems with certain sites on my laptop (which is running Vista Home ). Gmail and google are the main ones, but I've also had issues with Zap2it.com's tv listings (and forums, when I tried to see if others were complaining about problems) and a few other sites sporadically.

Gmail is giving me the "Oops...the system was too busy to perform your operation (error code 007). Please try again in a few seconds" message more often than not, and I'm not getting some of my email.

Sometimes when I try to do google searches or click on the results, it loads to a blank page. It says 'Done' in Firefox's status bar, but nothing's showing up.

When dealing with the aforementioned sites, the status bar says 'Waiting for (site), and then I'm getting the following message/error periodically:

Plus, all pages seem to be loading slower than before.

Like kindashy, I'm a bit curious about the network topology. This laptop that's running as a router has two ethernet interfaces (one for the wired desktop, one for the WAN/internet) and a wireless interface configured to act as an access point? That's seems like a lot of trouble to set up when you could get a wireless router for $40.

Regardless, have you tried checking to see if the problem occurs when you're connected over a wire. Disconnect the desktop, plug your laptop in, and shut off the wireless on it. Try it then for a while. (I don't expect any change, but perhaps.)

Otherwise, I'd check to make sure your laptop isn't having problems with DHCP. It doesn't sound like it, but I know Vista uses some old deprecated DHCP stuff. (It's so bad an ISP in Sweden refuses to support it.) But if that was the problem, I'd be surprised you could get on any site. Try setting up the laptop and router to use static IP addressing (just for the laptop) and see if that helps.

That's all I can think of off the top of my head. Good luck.

 

[akronareaguy]

I've worked in IT for over 10 years. I would say that on the Linux firewall start a sniffer and check to see if the traffic is flowing. That may give you a clue as to what is going on.

I agree to switch from DHCP to static addresses.

Finally, check to see what you DNS is set to. If its set to your router, find out what your ISP DNS servers are and set it to those. I've had this same problem before and it turned out my router's DNS daemon was messing up. Once I switched to my ISPs DNS servers everything was hunky-dory.

 

[In Anticipation]

It seems the only change you have made is from one linux box as a router to another linux box, so it has to be the key. Having said that I would advise buying a cheap wireless router (or wired if you don't need wireless) they are inexpensive and easy to set up. It's a bit of an overkill using a PC, which probably consumes 100w of power as opposed to under 5 for a router.

PS I had to change the MTU on XP some while back, on one rather old ADSL modem/router, I don't know whether it's an issue now. The symptoms were similar to yours, some websites not working.

My experiences with Vista are a bit nightmarish, I'm hoping to be able to avoid it for myself. Only reason I will get it is for games, if forced.

 

[SweetErika]

It seems the only change you have made is from one linux box as a router to another linux box, so it has to be the key. Having said that I would advise buying a cheap wireless router (or wired if you don't need wireless) they are inexpensive and easy to set up. It's a bit of an overkill using a PC, which probably consumes 100w of power as opposed to under 5 for a router.

PS I had to change the MTU on XP some while back, on one rather old ADSL modem/router, I don't know whether it's an issue now. The symptoms were similar to yours, some websites not working.

My experiences with Vista are a bit nightmarish, I'm hoping to be able to avoid it for myself. Only reason I will get it is for games, if forced.

I thought it was overkill, too, but the reason we went to the linux box setup was we kept having trouble with (wired) routers overheating and dropping our connection. Right before we switched, it was happening so frequently that we were resetting the modem and router more than not, and often having trouble doing anything online at all. We happened to have an extra box available, so we set that up and only had to think about it after a power outage.

It might be selfish and un-PC, but the extra power usage is worth not having the hassle of one dropped connection after another. And, yes, I realize this newer setup isn't trouble-free, but what's happening now pales in comparison to the problems we had with the actual router.

Hubby's on his way home and has some ideas on fixing the current issues. If that doesn't work, he'll go through the suggestions made here that he hasn't tried already.