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Computer does not see modem. Help!

Discussion in 'Fred's House of Pancakes' started by daniel, Oct 10, 2009.

  1. daniel

    daniel Cat Lovers Against the Bomb

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    So this afternoon I tried to log onto Yahoo and it asked for my password. Odd, since it normally only asks once every two weeks and it was far short of that. When I entered it, I got a message from Firefox saying FF was offline. I told it to go online, and then it said it could not connect to the internet.

    I rebooted the modem and the computer, to no avail. I called Cableone and they suggested fiddling with the physical ethernet cable, but that didn't help. I went to System Preferences / Network / Ethernet, and it said "Either the cable for Ethernet is not plugged in or the device at the other end is not responding." I went to Assist Me / Diagnostics / Ethernet and it said "This computer does not seem to be connected..." etc.

    So I unplugged the computer from the cable modem and plugged in my netbook, and presto, I can connect.

    Went back to the Mac, no connection. Again to the netbook, no problem. So I'm on the netbook now.

    The Mac is running OS S 10.6.1.

    It is Saturday evening, so I won't be able to consult the Macintosh repair place until Monday. While I can go online with the netbook, it is a lot slower.

    Any suggestions, other than wait until Monday?

    Thanks
     
  2. TheForce

    TheForce Stop War! Lets Rave! Make Love!

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    Do you have a spare network card you can install? If so install the card and see if that fixes the issue.

    If its not hardware its the drivers for the card or something messed up in the OS. Reinstall drivers or reinstall the OS.

    [edit] if you modem has USB try using that instead of ethernet.
     
  3. daniel

    daniel Cat Lovers Against the Bomb

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    No spare card here, and the modem does not have USB. I don't think I'd want to try a full reinstall. What's involved in reinstalling just the drivers?
     
  4. TheForce

    TheForce Stop War! Lets Rave! Make Love!

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    I don't know how its done on a MAC but in the windows world you uninstall the NIC in the device manager, usually restart the PC, and reinstall the drivers you got with the PC or downloaded from the net.

    See if you can find updated drivers for your NIC first and just install them. If that does not work uninstall and reinstall. If that does not work just use your netbook until monday. :)
     
  5. dogfriend

    dogfriend Human - Animal Hybrid

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    Daniel,

    Go into Finder, Go to your hard drive, Go to Library > Preferences. Find the file called com.apple.networkConfig.plist and drag that file to the desktop. Then Log Out or Restart the computer. The preference file will be recreated when you log back in. Hopefully this will fix the problem. If not, no harm done, you can replace the new one with the old one on the desktop if you absolutely need to.
     
  6. dogfriend

    dogfriend Human - Animal Hybrid

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    Duplicate post
     
  7. mojo

    mojo Senior Member

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    I dont know Mac.
    For Windows I use a registry cleaner which fixes most problems.
    If that doesnt work, I Google any question and theres an answer in the results.
    Ive fixed my refrigerator,my stereo ,my cars,my phone ,my health,and constantly my computer .
     
  8. daniel

    daniel Cat Lovers Against the Bomb

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    Okay, I moved com.apple.networkConfig.plist to the desktop and restarted the computer. It did not recreate the file. Just for curiosity I opened the file, and it contains only one key:

    NetworkConfigured

    with a value of 1.

    So I moved the file back to the Preferences folder. :(
     
  9. dogfriend

    dogfriend Human - Animal Hybrid

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  10. hobbit

    hobbit Senior Member

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    Sounds like you've got a dead ethernet interface; does the link
    light on the *modem* end come on when you plug the mac in? Did
    you try a different jumper cable, even though the other machine
    works it could be just flakey enough to not work on the mac?
    Anything in the system log about network interface timeouts
    and the like?
    .
    _H*
     
  11. daniel

    daniel Cat Lovers Against the Bomb

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    Mine is the same as yours if I open it in Text Edit. If I click on the file itself it opens in another program that lists the keys and their values. In this case, just the one.

    The link light is off when connected to the Mac. It's on when connected to the netbook. I put a different ethernet cable on the mac, and the link light is still off. I used the first cable to connect the netbook, so the cable does not seem to be the problem, though I suppose a bad connector at the Mac could be.

    If I could not check my email on the netbook I'd probably try my wireless travel router. But I've never installed the updates for Airport, and I'm not desperate as long as the netbook connects. So I guess I'll just take it in on Monday.
     
  12. daniel

    daniel Cat Lovers Against the Bomb

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    It just occurred to me that I could try restoring the driver from my backup disk, if I knew where it was located. Anybody know?
     
  13. hobbit

    hobbit Senior Member

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    If your link light is off at the non-mac end when you connect
    through any cable, it's a hardware problem, not a driver problem.
    Mac "drivers" aren't quite like windoze drivers, and the "just
    reinstall stuff willy-nilly" model is sort of the wrong approach.
    You're welcome to try and I might be immediately proven wrong,
    but in the interest of saving some headache...
    .
    _H*
     
  14. jayman

    jayman Senior Member

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    I don't connect directly to my cable modem, I have a Linksys router and a Cisco "workgroup" unmanaged switch. Although rare, an actual Ethernet hardware failure on a motherboard is possible

    The nice thing about plugging into a switch or router, a link failure is immediately apparent through the LED diagnostics. That alone can save a lot of frustration in tracking down a problem

    I also have an RJ-45 tester, which I use to verify my installations. That also saves a lot of time tracking down a problem

    With the rare hardware failure on the motherboard, a cheap PCI Ethernet card quickly put it back in business. Or, some motherboards - this is the wintel world - use custom drivers. If you lose the driver CD, and can't find the drivers online, you're Tango Uniform unless you install a cheap PCI Ethernet card
     
  15. daniel

    daniel Cat Lovers Against the Bomb

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    Okay, thanks. I guess it's going in to the shop tomorrow.

    I know what a router is. The rest of your post is Greek to me. But if Hobbit is right, then it's irrelevant.

    BTW, I decided to try connecting via airport to my travel wifi router. I was clearly in over my head. The router is set up to be invisible, but it has a name and a WEP code. I told airport the name, but it asked for a password, and I could not figure out how to enter a WEP code. I booted up the Nokia N800, which is what I had the router for in the first place, since the N800 has no ethernet. It found the router but could not connect, and my bookmark to the router itself would not work. I was too frustrated to try a hardware reset on the router because I had had so much difficulty getting it configured in the first place. I'm way over my head with this stuff.

    I'll still want to get the Mac fixed so it can connect properly, and the router would have been a temporary fix for today, which is not even necessary as long as the netbook can connect.

    I suppose there's no practical way to encrypt my Documents folder so that private stuff cannot be seen by the people who will be fixing my computer. They will need my passwords, I suppose. I'd like to be able to encrypt my Documents folder with its own password, as they won't need access to that folder.

    I suppose I could move the entire folder to the trash, use Secure Empty Trash, and then restore it afterwards from my backup. Seems a bit extreme, though.
     
  16. ctmurray

    ctmurray Member

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    The method on a Mac to encrypt and password protect stuff is to create a disk image using the Disk Utility. FileVault is part of the Mac OS and this encrypts your entire hard disk. Disk Utility allows you to put whatever you want into a disk image with encryption and password protection.

    There are also shareware software that uses the same method but a more friendly interface. Tao has Espionage, Knox is another name. I found by searching on "mac os file encryption". There are several.
     
  17. hobbit

    hobbit Senior Member

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    If you're concerned about privacy, take the hard drive OUT of
    the machine before it goes in, and tell them to fix the ethernet
    port and use a random OS disk of their own to test from.
    If they piss and moan about that, escalate. There's no reason
    a failure unrelated to the drive or the software on it needs
    YOUR drive present to effect a repair.
    .
    _H*
     
  18. daniel

    daniel Cat Lovers Against the Bomb

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    okay. Thanks for the suggestions.
     
  19. dogfriend

    dogfriend Human - Animal Hybrid

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    I would backup your personal stuff if possible before you take the computer in - if it is a hardware issue, they may opt to swap your laptop for a replacement and you will get a computer with nothing on it.

    My hunch is it is a software issue because I have only had one defective piece of hardware from Apple since buying my first Mac in 1995. (It was an Airport base station, which they exchanged for a new one as soon as they verified the problem.)
     
  20. daniel

    daniel Cat Lovers Against the Bomb

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    Everything is backed up. Time Machine does that automatically. And the issue is with my iMac, not my laptop.

    So, you think the problem is software because of the reliability of Apple hardware, and Hobbit thinks it is hardware because the Link light is off when connected to the Mac. Hmmm.