Troubleshooting Strategies

Troubleshooting Networking Problems

Isolating the problem allows your problem report to be as informative as possible and greatly speeds up the investigation process. Refer to the following troubleshooting steps when you suspect that you have a network problem:

Check your hardware (hub, cables, and so on).
Check your network adapters and drivers.
Use the ipconfig.exe tool. At the command line type:
ipconfig /all

Scan through the output from ipconfig.exe, and try to answer the following questions:

Do you have an IP address?
Do you have a default gateway?
Do you have a DHCP server?

Try to ping the default gateway and DHCP server. Attach the output to your mail, and then type:

ipconfig /all > c:\mail_attachment1.txt

Use the Netdiag.exe tool. At the command line type:

netdiag.exe

Scan through the output looking for words like "FATAL."

Make sure the domain controller is working properly by pinging the domain controller.

DHCP might be the problem. Try releasing your IP address, restarting DHCP and getting an IP address again.

If you can't get an address, do a network sniff of all traffic to and from your computer and to and from the DHCP server from which you usually get addresses. If you can't connect (even though you have a valid address), a network sniff of the connection attempt could be useful.

Note

Use Nbtstat and Nslookup for name resolution and to report problems.

For more information about troubleshooting network problems, see the Microsoft® Windows® 2000 Server Resource Kit TCP/IP Core Networking Guide.