Problems getting SMC router working

[HellRaven]

I am having problems getting my friends 4 port SMC7004BR working with his computer and cable modem.

I am pretty sure it isn't the router, but figured I might as well see what some other people think. The power light is on, the self test blinks like it should. The light on port 1 is on which is the one the nic is plugged into. The WAN port is connected to the cable modem properly.

I followed the instructions that came with the SMC router (which worked fine when I followed them with mine although they were a little confusing) Everything seemed to work fine. I got everything plugged in and the router turned on. I set the TCP/IP that is bound to the NIC to server assigned for IP addy and DNS with no gateways. This computer is Win98 first edition BTW, although my friend duel boots with Win2k. We decided to do Win98 first since he primarily uses 2k so that if we did something wrong it wouldn't be a big deal.

I rebooted and the next step listed is to release/renew the NIC through winipcfg. This may be related to the problem, as when I tried to do that it came back got an error 23 or 32 (I know better - should have written it down ). This happens whenever I tried to release or renew the NIC.

I tried to continue on. Next step was to go to admin page. Punched in the IP for the admin page and all I got was a nice "Page can not be displayed". So it seems like the problem is somewhere in the connection between the NIC and the router. He has no proxies but does have Zonealarm. It has that same error with Zone Alarm on and with it disabled.

The NIC is a cheapy $10 - $20 NIC that the cable company installed when they installed his cable service. It is listed as being a Winbond 10/100 NIC(with a really long @ss model #).

So, I reloaded the NIC drivers and now we can't even boot into Win98 without going to safemode. He keeps getting fatal exception OE's occuring in PPPmac.vxd. Damn NIC...

Soooo, if you made it this far reading thanks. My guess is that his crappy NIC is the problem since it seems rather flaky. Any suggestions welcome.

 

[dr0p0ut]

not sure if i can help. the nic that come with my dsl company die 2 week
after the install day. ( ameritech is my dsl provider)

could be your friend's nic decided to kick the bucket sooner the mine did

dr0p0ut

 

[HellRaven]

*Bump*

Any other opinions?

 

[Rickten]

I had a similar problem to you. My NIC wouldn't connect to the router to get an IP. THis is what I had to do. Go into the options for your network card. In Win98 I think you go network panel --> click on the network card --> properties --> advanced (may be something different for you). Now you want to make sure that connection type says something like 100base TX Full Duplex. Just make sure that you don't have auto detection enabled because I guess the router doesn't like that. Switching this option worked for me. Now if I could just get the damn thing to stop disconnecting me that would be great.

 

[HellRaven]

Thanks Rickten,

I double checked on that and it looks like mine is set correctly.

I just got it working though. Had my buddy boot into safe mode and then I removed his NIC in the device manager. When it rebooted into normal mode it redetected the NIC and I had it install the updated drivers for the NIC I downloaded from the manufacturers website.

Just to test it I tried releasing and renewing through winipcfg and it worked this time. So I hooked up the router and now we can get to the admin page. Plugged in all the info we wrote down like IP addy, DNS #'s, Gateway and now it is working perfectly.

Next step - setting up his HomePNA network. That should be fun... I hope