Unidentified network with Vista

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Ok, I have been having this problem since I built the system. The system I built has all brand new components. Here is a list of them:

Intel Q6600 Quad Core 2 2.4Ghz

ASUS Striker II Formula mobo

2 EVGA 8800GTS video cards

CoolerMaster Cosmos case

Lite-On DVD burner SATA

Samsung DVD burner SATA

floppy drive

one 80 GB Western Digital HD SATA(OS drive)

two 500 GB Western Digital HD SATA

Creative Labs Soundblaster Xi-Fi ExtremeGamer sound card

Big Typhoon CPU heat sink

Thermaltake 850W power supply

2 Corsair Dominator 1 GB PC2 8500 Dual Channel RAM

Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit

The NIC is onboard the motherboard, which there are two ports. They are NVIDIA.

I got it all put together with only minor problems (bad memory), which was fixed and Vista installed perfectly. I get it setup in my computer room and install drivers for the video cards. Then, I am not sure of the process that I went though, but, the network cable was plugged in. I was able to get some kind of network connection after playing around with it for some time, which I think I was able to directly get into the admin of the router (Linksys WRT54G) and it gave me a connection to the internet and I was able to download the update for Vista. Then, when it rebooted, I got the “Unidentified network” message and I could not connect to the network again. I have since tried to reinstall Vista with no luck. I have tried to install a new network using WORKGROUP as the name (MSHOME was the name before), but still no luck. I have tried one port, then the other and then both of them. NVIDIA has an option to allow both ports to work together, which was not enabled at first, now it is. I still have no network connection or internet. I have no room to install a PCI NIC, as my video cards take up four slots. I have tried to connect directly to the modem, but no access. When I try to do ipconfig/release and renew, it stalls and does not complete. If I remember correctly, when it tries to do the second NIC port, at which time it did not have a cable plugged into it. Below is the IP Address and Gateway address the Vista machine is giving me when I do ipconfig/all:

IPv6 Address – fe90::9cf9:a939:a28:d65d
IPv4 Address – 169.254.214.93
Subnet Mask – 255.255.0.0
Default Gateway –

I am trying to connect the Vista machine to a network that I have had setup for years with one XP Pro SP2 and one XP Home SP2 machines. Sometimes I have had a laptop running XP Pro SP2 hooked in wirelessly. I have looked all over the web and have found some instances of this kind of problem happening, but there is no solution posted. When I first got the connection to my router, I saw the WRT54G connection and I have a password on my router to gain access to it, both wireless and wired, but I could not remember the correct password, but when I tried the administration password for the router, that is when I got through. Now, I cannot even get Vista to allow me to see the WRT54G like that again (I have since gotten the password that I forgot I had used). When I try to establish a connection or even make one, I get four options:

Connect to the Internet

Set up a wireless router or access point

Set up a dial-up connection

Connect to a workplace

None of those options allows me to connect to a wired router. When I try the wireless option, it keeps telling me that I have no wireless NIC (duh, that is right, they are wired). When I try the Internet option it tries to set me up with a broadband dial-up option with PPPoE. This never sees the modem and keeps asking me to try it again. The network is set to Private, although, the time that it did connect, I believe that it was set to Public because I didn’t know about that setting change.

At this point I have exhausted all that I know of how to connect a network and then some. I know there has to be some kind of fix for this and I don’t think it is with SP1 or any of the updates. I need to drop the connection that the computer keeps connecting me to and go through the setup wizard that I did the very first time that allowed me to see the WRT54G router so I can put in the correct password. But, I don’t see a wizard for a wired network. I can use all the help that I can get on this one. Thank you.

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If you went back and reinstalled Vista from scratch and can’t access the Internet then perhaps your NIC is bad. I’d temporarily uninstall one of the graphics cards and install a PCI NIC to test.

Joe

--Joe

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Well, after about two long weeks of beating my head against a titanium plate, I finally found out what was wrong. I went to the ASUS website, which I should have done first, and saw some other people having the same problems. The fix that many of them tried and it worked was to hit the Reset CMOS button on the motherboard and it worked perfectly fine after that. So, I tried it. Thought it couldn’t hurt. Powered off my system, hit the reset button, booted it up and presto, it quickly and flawlessly found my network and my internet connection. I am running perfectly fine now, after spending hours and hours and hours and extra money on wireless adapters, it was just something so simple as to reset the CMOS. DOH!

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That was so bad. Glad you got it working. Thanks for posting the solution. That may help another Lounger in the future.

Joe

--Joe

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