Router, NAS, netbook problems - help requested

[eoneill]

Hi all. I've been struggling with a home network setup and looking everywhere for answers. Here's what I have:

-- Roughly 1-year-old Netgear router (I'll have to check later on the exact model) - latest updates loaded. Attached to the cable modem.

-- Seagate Blackarmor 110 NAS, ethernet-connected to the router - latest updates loaded. I believe its IP address is static, and that the router shows that.

-- Win XP Pro desktop ethernet-connected to the router. Has Avast FREE, I think the XP built-in Firewall is on. Should it be off?

-- Asus EEE Netbook, XP Home edition, (upgraded to 2MB RAM) using wireless. Has Avast FREE. Should its XP built-in Firewall be on or off?

-- 4 iPod Touches connecting via wireless

-- Another XP desktop (home edition), but rarely used, so not dealing with that now.

The problems are multiple, and that's why I don't know what component is the failure point, or whether there are multiple failure points. Or which area of this forum would have been best for this Thread.

1: The XP Pro desktop is not able to connect to any other shared folder on the network (specifically on the Asus Netbook).

2: The XP Pro desktop can read and write to the Blackarmor NAS, but it's intermittent. Every time I copy over some files, I get an alert after a few have gone over, saying the location is no longer available. If I refresh the Win Explorer window, it will come back, and I can copy some more over. Rinse and repeat.

3: The Asus Netbook can almost never see the Blackarmor NAS. Occasionally, though, it will show up. Sometimes the daily scheduled backup will work (incremental files) but never the once-weekly system backup.
If you try to connect the Asus to the NAS ala Mapped Drive (by name), an alert will say it is unavailable and I may not have permission to view it. I haven't tried by IP address, but should do that sometime soon, I'm sure.

4: The iPod Touches will intermittently be unable to connect to the web. Turn their wifi off and on, and you can get through again. Turn the router and modem off and on, and it seems like the drop-offs are solved, for a day or so.

5: The Asus Netbook has odd 3-5 second burring sounds occasionally in the audio, while watching Netflix or YouTube, but Netflix streams play fairly well, usually after having trouble for the first 2-4 minutes.

6: I brought home my new work laptop one weekend, running in the same location as the Asus, and Netflix worked great. Forgot to try "seeing" the NAS, though... should try that sometime soon.

So the three suspicious parts are 1, 2, or all 3 of the NAS, the router, and the Netbook.

I've considered buying a new router... but how will I know which one will work well with my NAS? And is the router the reason for the iPod Touch problems? Or are they their own worst enemy? Mine is OS4, and never has a problem on my work network. Others in the family are on OS3.

I've been planning to clean re-install XP on the Netbook, but of course that would be a fairly large hassle. Maybe it would be better to buy whatever you call the Win 7 "light" version for it, instead?

Too many questions, I'm sure. But I've been told this is a great place for just what I'm dealing with. Hope some kind folks will give the benefit of their knowledge. I'm a Web developer, not a networking guru, so my knowledge level is only pretty basic.

Thanks so much,
-eon-

 

[GregN]

Things I'd try:

Swap out the router with another router, see if that makes a difference.

Check the logs on the old router, resolve any issues it claims to have.

Check Event Viewer under windows on the machines that are not seeing the NAS, resolve any issues they see.

Check the Logs on the NAS, resolve any issues it sees.

Make sure everything is on the same subnet, turn off any windows permissioning, and firewalls.

Without specific failure descriptions, ala log messages it is difficult to diagnose anything

 

[thiggins]

Best thing is to separate the problems and solve one at a time.

Start by shutting everything completely off, especially all Windows computers. Then bring the router up.

Then power on whichever machine is normally on, I suspect the XP desktop. Make sure it can connect to the Internet, update Avast and run a full system scan. Then shut off the XP firewall temporarily to keep that out of the possible problem causers.

Then connect the NAS, see if you can browse to it and reliably transfer files.

That should get you started.

 

[eoneill]

Thanks, both

I'll certainly try all those things. Except I don't have another router to try.

So far, I've looked at the event viewer on the Netbook, which is the machine most used in the house (the desktop is rarely on), and have seen occasional errors getting or renewing IP lease and Print Spooler problems.

Some samples from System events:
-----------------
Timeout (30000 milliseconds) waiting for the Print Spooler service to connect.
-----------------
The WebClient service failed to start due to the following error:
The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion.

Event Type: Error
Event Source: Service Control Manager
Event Category: None
Event ID: 7011
Date: 4/12/2011
Time: 4:47:16 PM
User: N/A
Computer: ASUS
Description:
Timeout (30000 milliseconds) waiting for a transaction response from the Spooler service.
-------------
Event Type: Warning
Event Source: Dhcp
Event Category: None
Event ID: 1003
Date: 4/10/2011
Time: 1:13:20 PM
User: N/A
Computer: ASUS
Description:
Your computer was not able to renew its address from the network (from the DHCP Server) for the Network Card with network address 00224375225D. The following error occurred:
The semaphore timeout period has expired. . Your computer will continue to try and obtain an address on its own from the network address (DHCP) server.

Data:
0000: 79 00 00 00 y...
--------------
Event Type: Error
Event Source: Dhcp
Event Category: None
Event ID: 1000
Date: 4/9/2011
Time: 6:44:34 PM
User: N/A
Computer: ASUS
Description:
Your computer has lost the lease to its IP address 192.168.1.92 on the Network Card with network address 00224375225D.
---------------
--- so, that's a normal IP address for this netbook. But then there's a warning like:
---------------
Event Type: Warning
Event Source: Dhcp
Event Category: None
Event ID: 1007
Date: 4/9/2011
Time: 6:45:47 PM
User: N/A
Computer: ASUS
Description:
Your computer has automatically configured the IP address for the Network Card with network address 00224375225D. The IP address being used is 169.254.239.74.
--------------
--- same network card, external IP. I don't know enough to be sure, but isn't that just wrong? Right now, ipconfig shows I have a proper local (192) address.

--- Will need to fire up the desktop to get router and NAS error logs. Probably not for another couple of days.

Thanks again, until then.

 

[eoneill]

Interesting event error RE the NAS

Event Type: Error
Event Source: MRxSmb
Event Category: None
Event ID: 8003
Date: 3/29/2011
Time: 7:57:29 PM
User: N/A
Computer: ASUS
Description:
The master browser has received a server announcement from the computer BA-226C86 that believes that it is the master browser for the domain on transport NetBT_Tcpip_{4CF69781-2339-42F6. The master browser is stopping or an election is being forced.
---------------
BA-226C86 is the NAS.

Anybody know what that means? Sounds... indicative.

 

[00Roush]

Sounds like it might have to do with NetBIOS and some or all of the computers involved trying to become the master browser. I would recommend you disable NetBIOS over TCP/IP on your Windows machines. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/313314 Note: by disabling this you will no longer be able to access computers by name. You will have to use the IP address to connect to each device. Test things out like this and see if you are still having connection problems.

Along with disabling NetBIOS you might double check that your NAS has a static IP. This will ensure devices won't loose connection to the NAS due to the IP address changing.

Last step would be to mess with the windows firewall. I believe even with the windows firewall on you should still be able to share files. As a last test you could disable the firewall for a while just to see if it helps.

Did you ever check to see what model your router is?

Let us know how it goes.

00Roush

 

[eoneill]

Router is Netgear RangeMax WPN824

Will add the rest to my things to test this weekend. Thanks much!

 

[eoneill]

Wondering about the IP oddness...

It strikes me that when one of my devices (iPod, netbook) gets a 169.x.x.x address instead of a 192.168.x.x, that might mean that the router is having a temporary/transitory failure in its DHCP service, and the device then decides to look to the cable modem for its IP. That would mean that the Netgear router is just being unreliable in general.

Does that make sense to anybody?

The NAS does indeed have a static IP. Well, the router had one address reserved for it, and it always shows up with that IP. I've just changed the NAS to static, so we'll see if that helps.

I've also just changed my iPod, netbook, and desktop to use reserved static addresses on the router. Still have something messed up in the audio on the netbook, but it just opened the NAS instantly, which has never happened before. Could that be the root of all the evil? Extremely poor DHCP service on the router? Fixed by reserving static addresses for our devices? That'd be curable, at least.

The NAS doesn't have any viewable logs, but if there's more trouble, I'll see what the desktop (direct-connected to the router) and router have to say.

If all goes well for a couple days, I'll try to post again to confirm.

Now if only I could get the netbook to stop stuttering... but that's for some other forum, some other day.

Oh, and something I did made the desktop unable to connect to the internet. can ping the NAS and other local computers, but not the router nor google (by ip or name)... now I'll have to spend 3 more hours trying things.

But hey, the NAS, netbook, and iPod are happier. Guess that's some progress.

 

[thiggins]

The Windows Master Browser election process is a wonderful thing. But it can be finicky, especially with computers that are on and off the network a lot, like wireless Netbooks.

The shut-everything-off drill I suggested is intended to fix that. But if the machine that is the master browser drops on and off the network, while other Windows machines remain, then they will try to become the Master browser and you can get problems trying to browse the network.

It strikes me that when one of my devices (iPod, netbook) gets a 169.x.x.x address instead of a 192.168.x.x, that might mean that the router is having a temporary/transitory failure in its DHCP service, and the device then decides to look to the cable modem for its IP. That would mean that the Netgear router is just being unreliable in general.

The cable modem has nothing to do with DHCP. If a Windows machine can't get its IP address via DHCP, it defaults to the 169.X.X.X "Link local" addresses.

If you set static IPs, be sure to use addresses outside the DHCP server range. Otherwise you could get address collisions. Using DHCP reservation is a better way to go, but clients still will depend on the DHCP server, in this case the router. With Static IPs, the DHCP server is out of the loop.

The most dependable way to access shares on Windows machines is by mapped drives. You might want to try that.

 

[eoneill]

Thanks again

Static IP addresses have improved the situation. The Netbook, in particular, is now more reliably seeing the NAS, and we can even print to the printer that is USB connected to the NAS and shared from there.

I'll be sure to set the DHCP range outside those static ones. Still having trouble with the desktop XP Pro machine - the ethernet cabled one. Seems I "broke" something in its setup. So I'll have to try the Netbook to get to the router setup screens.

I do still find that after a while, the NetGear router starts having dropouts again and must be restarted. That sounds really cheesy, so I'm thinking of getting a new Cisco/Linksys Dual-Band N Router (E2500). However, waiting until cable company puts in a new package next week (adding phone to internet service). The current router is only about 1 to 1.5 years old, though, so I'm disgusted that it's so unreliable.