Connection problems...

[Kraft]

Okay, I feel a little ashamed for asking this, but i can not for the life of me figure it out.

So here goes...

I am at a relatives house at the moment, and i brought my laptop with me.  While I was there (I am here for 2 weeks then I am off to college) I decided to save my music, art and important things to a external hard drive and then wipe my computer, reformat the thing and start anew (I do this about once a year... sometimes when a virus makes me and sometimes when they thing just slows down ^_^)

Anyways, I am here now, and it is all done.  Now the thing is to connect my laptop to the internet at my relatives house.

They have a cable box, and from that runs a normal internet cable (i cant remember... i think it is called CAT 5 or something) anyways that runs straight to my relatives computer and gives it internet.

Now my problem is that when I connect it to my computer, to update it and to register a few programs so that I can work them, it will not connect.

I do not have a CD from their computer (like a driver CD) or anything, and I dont have a username and password to use to connect or anything (it was lost... somewhere, or the installation dude had it with him)

Whenever I connect the cable to my laptop, in the networks folder the LAN network connects and so does the 1394 one.  They both say that they are connected, but I still dont get internet access...

Is there any way to get it connected?  I cant for the life of me remember how to do it...

Thanks!

~Kraft

 

[___]

You actually don't need to do anything except reset the modem, it's no big deal.  The thing is the modem remembers the MAC address (which is a completely unique identifier assigned to your network card) of the computer that was connected to it.  If you plug it into a different adapter it either doesn't bother to, doesn't want to, or isn't capable of assigning an IP (identifier for communicating over the internet).  Some modems will keep a list of between 1 and 5 MACs it's willing to swap between, adding further to the confusion (it worked yesterday and last tuesday, but it won't today, wtf?!).

So to fix it, easy enough you either have to unplug it for around 30 seconds to 1 minute (the amount of time it takes to discharge stored up electricity that's keeping its memory alive) or you can look for a little pinhole button usually in the back, press that down with a paperclip or whatever and hold it for a few seconds.  You'll know it works when the lights flash and it starts reconnecting.  Then you should be fine, just remember to do it again before you plug back into the relative's PC.  Incidentally if you can just go get a cheap router and save yourself some trouble.