I've got a Dell E5400 laptop running Vista Business, and am having issues connecting to network services. My symptoms are that I'm unable to browse the web (both on the Internet and the local network (web server of my router)) or connect to Windows Update, Windows Live Messenger or Skype. I can ping and tracert servers both on my local network and the Internet. (Have not tried any other online apps/services yet)

• The ping is both with IP addresses and names, so I'm ruling out DNS issues.
• Another laptop on the network can run with no issues at all (XP machine).
• If I disconnect and reconnect to the wireless network, I can browse normally for a while (up to half an hour-ish) and then the machine reverts to being unable to connect
• Google Chrome's error message is CONNECTION_TIMED_OUT (or similar, can't remember exact name of error nor the number)
• I am running with Windows Firewall turned on. I've checked that the programs I'm trying to connect with are in the exceptions list, and have also tried turning it off, but this has no affect
• The laptop came with Norton installed but I haven't activated it yet
• Looking at the network connection tray icon, it slowly oscillates between "Local Network Only" and "Local Network and Internet"
• Diagnosing Network Issues does not find any issues (although it does helpfully ask me if I want to go online and find more resources - err, yeah, I do want to go online. That's the problem, you dumb POS)

Can't think of any more relevant details at the moment. Google isn't returning any information on people with these symptoms, only problems accessing Windows Update (rest of Internet is working fine for them). Any ideas where I should be going from here?

You can ping websites?

Anyway, have you looked at the IP settings and verified they are correct?

I can ping [url]www.google.co.uk[/url], but cannot browse to it in a web browser. This is what led me down the path of investigating the firewall, thinking it might be a ports issue.


The IP settings appear correct. It's configured by DHCP. The only thing I wasn't really sure about was that the wireless adapter in the laptop supports IPv6 - it's picking up an IPv6 address, but I'm not sure if my router supports it (it is a fairly recent router, bought it in the last 6 months or so, so conceivably could do) or whether Vista is pulling that out of nowhere.

Try disabling IPv6 on Vista.

Control Panel > Network > Advanced Adapters > Right click Local Area Network > Properties > Untick the IPv6 box and click OK.

If you are using an IPv4 network you should always do this or else Vista will try IPv6 for every connection, slowing down initial connection speeds since it has to time out. Disabling IPv6 on an IPv4 network will bring the networking speeds back up to XP's.

Turning off IPv6 does appear to have fixed the issue. Thanks.

Right, doesn't look like it's solved the problem in fact.

I'm wondering whether it might be interference from our baby monitor / other broadcasting device after reading this, but am unsure 1) why it would work with other laptop (obviously different wireless network adapter, but wouldn't have thought sufficient differences for one to interfere and the other not at all?) and 2) how to test whether it's having an effect or 3) what to do about it if it is

uninstall norton

Try visiting Google with your My Computer Address Bar instead of your web browser's.

Umm, you know that's just Internet Explorer right? Plus starting with XPSP2 (or maybe it's IE7) it just launches your default browser instead, in an effort to appease anti-trust people.

He clearly established that it wasn't a web browser-related problem in his opening post.

Try running Wireshark, it may show you something. At the very least you can post a capture log here of an HTTP request and maybe someone can figure it out for you.