Why Did My Whole Network Vanish?

My Network yesterday morning was working just fine. When I came back at night, nothing worked. I have a desktop (EMachines), a Linksys router, and a Sony Vaio laptop that is connected wirelessly. I have already tried turning off my Norton Firewall in case there were some updates that messed things up, restored both computers to 2 days earlier, and made sure that my wireless is functioning - which it is.

What on earth could've happened that it would just up and vanish? My Network vanished (file and printer sharing only - internet was fine) over a month ago and I had to hire a computer tech to come and fix it. It cost me a bundle, but worked fine since then. I really don't want to hire another person to come out. Why is this continually happening?

THanks for any advice.

Stephanie

 

P.S. I already tried pinging them and i couldn't.

 

try unplugging the router shutting everything down for 5 mins the restart the router then the computers. If nothing works at all it could be a number of things. Did you have WEP set up on the router? if not anyone can hop on your network and change your settings.

Find out if you can even see the router

start > run > command <enter>

ipconfig

if you have an ip address that doesnt start with 169 then thats a good sign if your running DHCP. If you have a gateway try pinging that IP address, that is the router. Try both of those and let me know about the IP and pinging the router, we can go from there.

 

This may be a hint. I got full network functionality back for about 5 min. for no particular reason and then it went away again. So I'm going to try unplugging/shutting down method that you explained.

In the meantime, here are the following ping results.

Desktop: Could not ping own IP Address, but COULD ping Gateway default address. (192.XXXXXXetc.)
Laptop: Could not ping own IP Address (169.XXXXXXXXetc.) and no Gateway default address was available.

Desktop could not ping Laptop IP address "Request timed out"
Laptop could not ping Desktop IP address "Destination Host unreachable."

I was able to see "Local Area Connection" on both computers when running IPCONFIG. I'm assuming that that's the router. Let me know if I'm wrong.

Stephanie

 

have you tried changing the channel that your WiFi is on? it sounds like 2.4GHz interference to me.

 

Kodo's always coming to my rescue Actually, shutting everything down for 5 min. did the trick!!! Thank God. Thanks, Wookie.

Kodo, since I'm learning so much from you, what is a WiFi (is it my router?) and how do I change channels? Thought I should know for the future because I could tell this wasn't a huge network issue since I got it started to work on it's own for 5 min...

Thanks so much!!
Stephanie

 

WiFi=Wireless Fidelity. Essentially I'm referring to "wireless". You can change the channels in the wireless configuration in your router. Similar to changing the channels on your cordless phone. you'll have to change the channel on your wifi config on your laptop to match.

I would also HIGHLY recommend that you change the routers login account information (if you haven't already done so) from the default factory settings as it could allow an outside person to control your router.