NCAAbbs

This one is kinda random. I'm mostly just looking for some ideas as to what the problem could be.

My fiance's mom works with special needs adults. One of her clients is constantly having issues with his computer (XP machine), normally due to catching viruses or unknowingly installing spyware, etc. After the computer made three or four trips to my house and I made a trip to his house to fix it, I was told to do whatever I had to do make sure such things quit happening. I decided to install Xandros 3.0 OCE (Debian based distro) on the machine.

Reasons:
a) No more viruses or spyware.
b) Root access will keep him from being able to install anything malicious or accidentally deleting important files (that's happened before, too).
c) ssh. I'll be able to log into his machine and do the updates, etc.
d) I first thought about putting Gentoo on the machine, but that's more oomph than he needs.

So, I installed Xandros on the machine at my house (we both have the same cable provider, both have Roadrunner.) The install was perfect. Xandros ran better on his machine than it did when I had it on mine because it liked the parts better, I reckon. I was able to get Hotmail configured in Thunderbird, set the machine up to play DVD's, and got Mplayer working (as well as it works on a Debian machine, anyway.)

I installed Xandros on Friday and used his machine all weekend. No bugs, internet was smoking. Like I said, it was a perfect install.

My fiance carried the machine back to her mom's client's house yesterday. She says she hooked everything up correctly and Xandros loaded normally. However, it cannot connect to the internet. I walked her through a couple of things on the phone like setting up the connection using the KDE control panel (it detects the ethernet card), removing the firewall...no dice.

Her mom called the cable company this morning to see if there was something wrong on their end. They told her they were able to log into the modem, so that's likely not the problem.

I'm going over there this weekend and have a couple of ideas of ways to approach this problem. I'm taking another ethernet cable over in case his is bad (and likely a USB cable too), taking my cable modem over there to see if it works, visibly checking the ethernet card to make sure it's working, and some other things.

Y'all have any other ideas?

Do some Google detective work on the modem type and Xandros when you get there.

Only thing that comes to mind is he does not have a proper set of tools installed for networking (missing dhcp?)

georgia_tech_swagger Wrote:Do some Google detective work on the modem type and Xandros when you get there.

Won't be any internet when I get there, but I know what modem he has so that's something I'll check before I get there.

Quote:Only thing that comes to mind is he does not have a proper set of tools installed for networking (missing dhcp?)

I had the same thought, but considering the fact that we both use Roadrunner provided by the same cable company and his machine was working at my house, I don't think that's it. Xandros installs everything and then uses what it needs. Upon first boot, it asks about your connection. dhcp was there as an option for connecting. I'll check, though.

Onboard Ethernet was dead. Went and got him a new $16 D-link ethernet card, viola.

As an aside - I'd rather throw a computer away than have to talk to Gateway Tech Support ever, ever again. I was on the phone with them for an hour and a half, in hopes that they'd just send the guy a replacement part as the machine is still under warranty. At the end of the ordeal, they said they'd fix it if we paid to ship it back to 'em. I told her she'd bumped her head.