I'd be very grateful if someone could help me help a non-techy friend
out, who's desperate to get back online so she can finish her coursework.
They live too far away to just drop by, so I'm doing it over the phone.
Over the course of a three hour phone call, I established the following:

She has Windows Vista Home Basic.
It is connected via a LAN cable to an Etec ADSL router.
It used to be connected via a USB modem (which is faulty and kept
crashing the PC)
She can get into the admin page of the router, which shows that it is
connected to the internet.
From a command line on the PC, she can ping an IP address, for example,
BBC News on 212.58.226.29
The packets go fine.
If she types ping news.bbc.co.uk, it says it cannot find the server
If she types ping -l 1500 212.58.226.29 she gets 100% packet loss.
On the internet connection status, it says:

ipv4 connected
ipv6 limited

If she goes to the diagnostics, it says:
"The security policy settings on this computer might be blocking the
connection. The following policy might need to be adjusted to allow
windows to connect.
Policy provider: Windows firewall
Filter Name: query user
If the policy provider identified is windows firewall, click for
information about adjusting windows firewall settings
If a different policy provider has been identified, check the providers
document".

Insofar as the PC can talk to the router and the router can talk to the
internet and small packet pings work but bigger packets don't, I thought
it must be the MTU settings.
The router defaults we mtu:1492 mru:1492 mss:1432
The router is running PPPoA on Orange broadband on the BT network I believe.
I went and Googled extensively and found an alternative setting of 1420
in all boxes, which we applied and rebooted, but the result was the same.
I then found these pages:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/com...uy/cg1005.mspx
http://www.chris123nt.com/guides/5365/
http://tweakhound.com/vista/tweakguide/page_9.htm
In particular, the last two sites recommend disabling IPv6, which makes
sense as it was that which reported limited connectivity. So, we made
the box look like the "recommended" on on the tweakhound site, and reset
the mtu, mru and mss to default. Rebooted everything, but again, pinging
IP works, pinging IP with larger packets or by name doesn't, and ip
addresses in websites don't work.

To my limited experience, it seems a classic case of fragmented packets
and MTU problems. But having only used Vista for about 20 minutes, I'm
now lost. We've been trying to resolve it since 8pm and it's now coming
up to midnight, so I'm really hoping one of you good people can come up
with a suggesting, bearing in mind that although she's a bright lass,
she's not a computer whizzkid, so registry edits might be going a bit far.

Many many thanks.

On Fri, 15 Jun 2007 00:00:45 +0100, Jamie Furlong wrote:

I'd be very grateful if someone could help me help a non-techy friend
out, who's desperate to get back online so she can finish her coursework.
They live too far away to just drop by, so I'm doing it over the phone.
Over the course of a three hour phone call, I established the following:

She has Windows Vista Home Basic.
It is connected via a LAN cable to an Etec ADSL router.
It used to be connected via a USB modem (which is faulty and kept
crashing the PC)
She can get into the admin page of the router, which shows that it is
connected to the internet.
From a command line on the PC, she can ping an IP address, for example,
BBC News on 212.58.226.29
The packets go fine.
If she types ping news.bbc.co.uk, it says it cannot find the server
If she types ping -l 1500 212.58.226.29 she gets 100% packet loss.
On the internet connection status, it says:

ipv4 connected
ipv6 limited

If she goes to the diagnostics, it says:
"The security policy settings on this computer might be blocking the
connection. The following policy might need to be adjusted to allow
windows to connect.
Policy provider: Windows firewall
Filter Name: query user
If the policy provider identified is windows firewall, click for
information about adjusting windows firewall settings
If a different policy provider has been identified, check the providers
document".

Insofar as the PC can talk to the router and the router can talk to the
internet and small packet pings work but bigger packets don't, I thought
it must be the MTU settings.
The router defaults we mtu:1492 mru:1492 mss:1432
The router is running PPPoA on Orange broadband on the BT network I believe.
I went and Googled extensively and found an alternative setting of 1420
in all boxes, which we applied and rebooted, but the result was the same.
I then found these pages:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/com...uy/cg1005.mspx
http://www.chris123nt.com/guides/5365/
http://tweakhound.com/vista/tweakguide/page_9.htm
In particular, the last two sites recommend disabling IPv6, which makes
sense as it was that which reported limited connectivity. So, we made
the box look like the "recommended" on on the tweakhound site, and reset
the mtu, mru and mss to default. Rebooted everything, but again, pinging
IP works, pinging IP with larger packets or by name doesn't, and ip
addresses in websites don't work.

To my limited experience, it seems a classic case of fragmented packets
and MTU problems. But having only used Vista for about 20 minutes, I'm
now lost. We've been trying to resolve it since 8pm and it's now coming
up to midnight, so I'm really hoping one of you good people can come up
with a suggesting, bearing in mind that although she's a bright lass,
she's not a computer whizzkid, so registry edits might be going a bit far.

Many many thanks.

Jamie,

Start with the MTU test.
"ping -l 1500 212.58.226.29" is testing an MTU of 1528. Remember to allow for
the header. Start with "-l 1472", and work downward. If her MTU was 1492,
start with "-l 1464".
http://nitecruzr.blogspot.com/2007/06/determining-mtu-to-single-server.html
http://nitecruzr.blogspot.com/2007/0...le-server.html

And when you say "pinging IP with larger packets or by name doesn't, and ip
addresses in websites don't work."
what do you get for "don't work"?
http://nitecruzr.blogspot.com/2006/03/dns-server-settings-on-your-computer.html
http://nitecruzr.blogspot.com/2006/0...-computer.html

--
Cheers,
Chuck, MS-MVP [Windows - Networking]
http://nitecruzr.blogspot.com/
Paranoia is not a problem, when it's a normal response from experience.
My email is AT DOT
actual address pchuck mvps org.

Chuck wrote:

Start with the MTU test.
"ping -l 1500 212.58.226.29" is testing an MTU of 1528. Remember to allow for
the header. Start with "-l 1472", and work downward. If her MTU was 1492,
start with "-l 1464".

Well as it happens:
1464 works
1470 works
1480 times out
1492 times out

As it happens, I found a solution from the help you provded plus a
variety of forum replies and further googling, I have the following
info, in case it helps anyone else.

We followed this tutorial and unbound IPv6 and the rest of the things
mentioned he
http://tweakhound.com/vista/tweakguide/page_9.htm
http://www.chris123nt.com/guides/5365/

We found that

We tried turning off the windows vista firewall:
http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/Win...fa1c01033.mspx
but that made no difference, so we turned it back on.

Then we did this:
netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=off

Finally, we added the Orange broadband adsl dns servers found here
http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/dns.htm to BOTH the router AND the LAN
properties in VISTA.

Put it all together and it works! I'm not sure whether it was removing
IPv6 or QOS or the autotuning, but it certainly wasn't loading pages
properly with JUST the dns servers.

Thanks very much!

On Fri, 15 Jun 2007 20:07:16 +0100, Jamie Furlong wrote:

Chuck wrote:

Start with the MTU test.
"ping -l 1500 212.58.226.29" is testing an MTU of 1528. Remember to allow for
the header. Start with "-l 1472", and work downward. If her MTU was 1492,
start with "-l 1464".

Well as it happens:
1464 works
1470 works
1480 times out
1492 times out

As it happens, I found a solution from the help you provded plus a
variety of forum replies and further googling, I have the following
info, in case it helps anyone else.

We followed this tutorial and unbound IPv6 and the rest of the things
mentioned he
http://tweakhound.com/vista/tweakguide/page_9.htm
http://www.chris123nt.com/guides/5365/

We found that

We tried turning off the windows vista firewall:
http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/Win...fa1c01033.mspx
but that made no difference, so we turned it back on.

Then we did this:
netsh interface tcp set global autotuninglevel=off

Finally, we added the Orange broadband adsl dns servers found here
http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/dns.htm to BOTH the router AND the LAN
properties in VISTA.

Put it all together and it works! I'm not sure whether it was removing
IPv6 or QOS or the autotuning, but it certainly wasn't loading pages
properly with JUST the dns servers.

Thanks very much!

Aha, the autotuning again. Thanks for pointing that out! And it sounds like
somewhere between 1470 and 1480 is your number.

I've seen more than a few folks here posting with IPV6, and that's not the
problem so often. I'll put my money on the autotuning setting - that's a new
Vista feature (and one that many folks with really fast broadband should like).
But like everything new, it needs work.

Anyway I'm glad that we were able to get you sorted.

--
Cheers,
Chuck, MS-MVP [Windows - Networking]
http://nitecruzr.blogspot.com/
Paranoia is not a problem, when it's a normal response from experience.
My email is AT DOT
actual address pchuck mvps org.