[Doublej]

Do you have any thoughts as to what might be happening in the following situation or how to fix it?

A friend has a laptop that works fine everywhere in the Universe except when at home with a Comcast connection the machine takes 5-10 minutes to get connected to the internet. Sometimes it doesn't connect at all. Behavior appears to be the same when connected to the cable modem (Motorola) or wifi router (TP-Link).

When she turns on her laptop other devices on the network can get kicked off. Turn the laptop off and other connections are restored. Supposedly if you change to another account on the laptop then everything works fine.

I scoured various boards but could not find a solution. Turned off IPV6, rebooted modem many times, tried various flushings, etc. all to no avail. Of course Comcast is not very useful.

To me it seems like some sort of address conflict but I can't figure out where.

[Phil A]

What happens when you look at 'my network.'  Do you see a list of devices?  Anything unusual?

[JerryM]

Comcast Motto:  We're not happy until you're not happy.

[ArthurDent]

Comcast Motto:  We're not happy until you're not happy.

  Sadly too true.

[Brad]

It does sound like an IP address conflict, but that would only bump ONE of the other devices off.  Unless maybe there is a static IP set that conflicts with the router itself.   Which device is handing out DHCP addresses - the modem or the router?   If both are handing out IP addresses, could be part of the problem.  Depends on how they are connected too.

Doesn't seem like a Comcast issue to me.


You can use this scanner against the local subnet(s) to see what's on there
http://www.advanced-ip-scanner.com/

[srb]

If one account on the computer is fine but another account has problems, you may have a corrupted account or one that has been compromised by a virus or malware.  I would start by running a full virus scan followed by a malware scan with Malwarebytes or equivalent.

Steve

[Brad]

If one account on the computer is fine but another account has problems, you may have a corrupted account or one that has been compromised by a virus or malware.  I would start by running a full virus scan followed by a malware scan with Malwarebytes or equivalent.

Steve

Good reading  , I missed that part about the account.   (But supposedly there are no issues with that account at other locations)

[srb]

I missed that part about the account.   (But supposedly there are no issues with that account at other locations)

And I forgot about the part that the account in question worked at other locations!  Since the specifics of this scenario is being relayed by a third party, I'm not sure exactly which operational specifics are true or not or what might be lost or confused in translation.

Steve

[GentleBender]

More information is needed on the modem and router. Do they both have wifi? When you connect to the modem are you using an Ethernet cable?

[Bizarroterl]

Run a full scan with your AV.  Make sure it is up to date beforehand.  Download, install, update, and run Malwarebytes.  Then run Kaspersky's TDSkiller.  These are things all PC owners should run regularly.

Go to a command prompt and type in "ipconfig /all" (without quotes) for the account that isn't working and for one that is.  Post the results here.

[Doublej]

Unfortunately the offending machine and location are 200 miles away. If there was a virus or malware on the machine would upgrading from Windows 8.1 to Windows 10 effectively neutralized it? The problem existed with 8.1 and remains on 10.

And supposedly all Asus Vendor updates have been applied as well as firmware update on the wireless router. The modem updates are managed by Comcast I am told.  There Motorola cable modem does not have wifi only the TP-Link wifi router.

I'll ask them to run AV and Malware bytes again.

How do you get the command prompt window to dump the screen to a file? Running an ipconfig /all seems like a brilliant way to see try to identifiy differences in the various scenarios.

And yes it is very difficult to know exactly what is being done/not done on the machine and what the results of any tests are for sure. I have newfound respect for remote support folks now.

[srb]

In Windows 10 right-click on the Start button and select Command Prompt (Admin)

Then enter:  ipconfig /all > c:\useripconfig.txt

to save the output to a textfile in the root of C: drive (or precede the filename with a path to write it to a different folder).

You can name the file whatever you like, but you will want to prefix the filename with the username of the account to differentiate the files.

Steve

[Bizarroterl]

Malware/trojans can survive a OS upgrade, though most would probably be broken by it.  If they wiped the HD and installed 10 from scratch that's a different story....

From the command prompt window run "ipconfig /all" without quotes.
Mouse Right click the title bar (at the top) of the window.
Select "Edit" then "Mark".
Highlight the area you want to copy. (mouse left click(hold) and drag to get the entire area to copy).
Release the left mouse button and then press enter.

The area you highlighted can now be pasted.

Doesn't really matter where the PC is located.  Just have them go to teamviewer.com and download & install the free version.  They have instructions on their site.  However when they're having network problems that does complicate things. 

[Doublej]

I reviewed the IP config logs of the problematic and non problematic accounts on the laptop and didn't see any difference. So I told my friend to try creating a new profile and migrate their data into it. That seems to have solved the problem.

[GentleBender]

That is what I would have done. Sometimes the best solutions are the easy ones. Glad you were able to solve it, remotely even. 

[FullRangeMan]

In Windows 10 right-click on the Start button and select Command Prompt (Admin)

Then enter:  ipconfig /all > c:\useripconfig.txt

to save the output to a textfile in the root of C: drive (or precede the filename with a path to write it to a different folder).

You can name the file whatever you like, but you will want to prefix the filename with the username of the account to differentiate the files.

Steve

I would say:
ipconfig /release
Then:
ipconfig /renew
It will search a free IP number to connect(renew).
If there is few or none unused IPs this may take afew minutes to connect with free IP number.

To see the current IP number type: ipconfig

[srb]

A day late and a dollar short.