Simple problems turned complicated

[Zoilo]

Here's a little topic for me to vent on some problems that could have been solved by some simple things, but looked for complicated things.

Last night I did 2 troubleshooting jobs. One was on my stepfather's network and the other was on my friend's computer/DSL service.

My stepdad had a wireless connection and I had a topic in here looking for help. I followed what they were telling me, but I forgot to turn the authentication off on the router. Sure enough, it took me 3 hours to figure that out. :mad: So now his wireless network runs flawlessly with WEP turned on.

My friend got the MSBLAST virus. First thing I tried to do, though, was get his DSL set up so I can download symantec's tool and microsoft's patch. I got everything wired correctly, but I couldn't figure out why it wouldn't connect. So I used his dial-up connection first, got the tool, got the patch, removed the virus. Still couldn't get IE working properly. My friend goes on while I'm on the phone with Verizon tech support and lo and behold, he gets on through Netscape. I could've avoided another 1.5-2 hours of work by changing his IE Internet connection settings to LAN instead of dial-up.

I learned my lesson...check through EVERYTHING and look up the simple solutions first.

[Big_Tex]

Good points you have there. I have been there done that before more than once I have spent hours on something simple I just was to much in a hurry to check the simple things out which made the jobs take longer then they needed too.

[su root]

Also, it's best to start on the overlooked things first. If the most likely fix doesn't work, then I check all the cables, ipconfig, pinging, then application config. Usually by then I've figured out whether it's hardware, OS, or a specific application causing it.

Always a good idea to try using another program. If your really stuck, try telnetting. eg:
C:\> telnet www.google.com 80
[screen clears]
GET /
[scroll of html code if it could retrieve the webpage]

Telnet can make connections on different ports. If you tell it to connect to a webserver on port 80, then type the command "GET /", the webserver will feed you the page you requested. If not, then you know it isn't your browser.