Kitz Forum
Computers & Hardware => PC Hardware => Topic started by: feliscatusx2 on August 14, 2007, 08:07:50 PM
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No 2 Daughter's young man (Ben) asked whether I wanted his old, but still fairly new PC. No charge, gratis zilch etc. Some bits are missing having been used in his new media centre.
It arrived on Sunday.
It is an Antec Sonata case with an Asus Mb, AMD 64 3000+ CPU with 1Gb RAM ;D
I need to find Hard, Optical and Floppy drives. No problem.
The Mb has 2 SATA ports plus 2 UDMA 133 ports. I already have a UDMA133 Samsung HDD but my CDRW and floppy are Beige and the case is black.
So I ordered from those nice people at CCL 1 Samsung 250Gb SATA HDD, one LG SATA DVD writer one IDE CD/DVD ROM and a black Sony Floppy Drive.
CCL deliver by CityLink :( (who guaranteed delivery by today)
Did anything arrive?
No :-X
Looking through the box of bits that came with the PC I find that Antec use a special HDD mounting screw to pass through the rubber bungs in the HDD mounting tray. For 2 HDDs I need 8, I've got 3 :'(
Phoned Ben, they are out.
Sent an E-mail to Antec Europe Support (we will answer your question within 24 Hours).
Have they replied?
No :-[
Waited in all day for CityLink, and also for the man who said he would come today to quote for fixing a misted up sealed double glazing panel.
Did he arrive?
No :flamer:
Bin day tomorrow, just been out to get things ready and the heavens opened :rain: my flash white polo shirt (£2.50 in Primark) is soaked.
Not a happy bunny.
Be warned.
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All in all not the most productive of days :'(
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Hiya... I have a few Antec server cases at work that came with those screws... I can see if I have any spare ones... if you want, give me a prod - I'll be in work towards the end of the week and can have a look if you want :)
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There are few things more frustrating than waiting in for a delivery which never arrives. I find myself sitting on the edge of my seat (so to speak) all day, and I can't concentrate on anything else. So you have my sympathy. :'(
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Confucius he say:- "Some days you are the pigeon, some days you are the statue" ;)
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Progress!
The delivery arrived today while we were in Whistable (got that paperback I have been after for ages - 95p :P), and was taken in by a kind neighbour.
Ben phoned to say he has found the screws and these will be delivered tomorrow.
Antec replied to say they can send even more screws if I give them an address.
Just waiting now for a new graphics card to replace the nVidia 5900 series gaming card fitted to which is attached a passive heatsink that look very much like a shrunken Anderson air raid shelter :-X. As I don't do games I've ordered an ATI 9550 AGP card with a passive cooler.
Only decision now is what OS. I have 98SE ME and 2000 Pro. Mrs FC wants 2000 as that is what she uses at work. Looking through the ASUS CD there are motherboard drivers for 98/ME and I may install the 98 patched with ME files that I was using before. Just to be b****y difficult you understand.
And please don't tell me that XP is more secure 'cos it ain't necessarily so ;). 98 may be old but it is very easy to secure and will do everything I need it to for now. And it will run on 1Gb of RAM if you talk to it nicely.
Will probably go for 2000 though. Indecisive, moi?
Still no word from the window man though >:(. I will try someone else.
Thank you all for your attention, it's nice to blow up now and again.
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Perhaps I'd better not comment on what OS to install. :)
Mind you, dual-booting works very well - install Windows first, leaving (say) 10GB of the HD unpartitioned, then Linux.
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Progress indeed :)
hmmm I dont much care for 98 - but thats just me and I did have some problems with it.
I think out of those choices then Win 2k would be my preference.
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I've fitted the Optical drives, Floppy and SATA HDD. All on rails that slide in (and out again). Realised that I was short of a SATA data cable and that the SATA power connectors are on one cable and are too close together.
Now ordered 2 data cables with right angled connectors and a Molex > SATA converter from CCL (1st class post, not CityLink ;D).
Graphics card is on the way, Ben will be round tomorrow evening to check all the cables are plugged in the right holes and to tidy up and see if everything works OK. If anybody is going to blow it up then I would rather it be him >:D.
I will probably go for W2K as I have already downloaded all the relevant drivers etc.
But it will be a very slimmed down, cut back hacked about version. This is a good site for W2K/XP/Vista: > http://www.blackviper.com/ , he lists all the services and suggests which can be safely disabled or set to manual.
The fox cubs are doing well and have grown up into handsome stroppy teenagers.
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Lets hope the new cables arrive soon. I'm awaiting a couple of parcels from city link (one of them containing an Antec case) over the next few days too, so I hope the driver doesnt do the same thing on me what he did to you :/
Will write up what I'm doing when I get chance - but things seem to have been a bit hectic this week and I dont seem to have had much spare time.
>> I will probably go for W2K as I have already downloaded all the relevant drivers etc.
Good choice me thinks :)
Let us know how it all goes.
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Being an impatient sort I wandered into the little PC shoppe at the top of the road and enquired whether they had a SATA data cable they could sell me.
Very, very nice man rummaged in a drawer and produced a packet with a data cable and a molex to SATA power converter. How much? "Oh just take them away we've got a drawer full of the b****y things".
So it's now sort of up and running, CPU shows as AMD 64 3000+ running at 2.0Ghz, HDD not yet formated but recognised correctly, will boot from the SATA CD/DVD RW and the floppy. The wiring is an absolute rats nest at the moment, but this will be sorted when everything is in place.
And it's QUIET ;D
I may disconnect the blue LEDS on the front though.
Still waiting for the graphics card which is coming from Amazon.EU, which is probably stowed on a dirty british coaster with a salt caked smoke stack, butting through the Channel in a mad March gale (the only bit of poetry I remember from childhood).
Just need to sort out what data I need from the drive in this PC then transfer that drive to the new one.
And yes, I had fitted the rear case fan the wrong way round :-[
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So youre getting there slowly but surely :)
>> I had fitted the rear case fan the wrong way round
hmmm Ive never "nearly" done that with a fan :-[
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hmmm Ive never "nearly" done that with a fan :-[
lol... why does the :-[ smiley make me think someone's not being totally truthful here..? ;)
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i bought a new drive yesterday for this media centre coz the drive 'dissapeared' from the system a few times.
250gb sata for $34 ! not bad .... tried acronis true image for the 1st time to make a mirror of the old drive - worked a treat :)
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It's up and running ;D
Just got loads of software to install over the next few days. The important stuff, K-Meleon and Kerio firewall are on, E-Mail works.
Gosh it's quick. Win 2K with 1Gb RAM and an 2 Gig CPU.
No problems as yet.
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Yay well done you. :) :thumbs:
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Excellent! :clap:
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Just run the PC Pitstop system checker.
No problems reported, but the following comment:
"This system performs extremely well on our benchmarks and appears to be among the fastest systems available! See the information below for your system details and advice on how to tweak the hardware and software for best performance."
Er... It may be quick, but it ain't that quick ;)
Still I'm very happy with it.
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Just ran those tests - My 3 year old PC (which was the doggies do-dah at the time) failed miserably on the Disk tests.
~ Upgrade disk space
~ Reduce System Restore Space
~ Clean up disk space
~ Defragment Drive C
I "only have" 450GB (although admittedly one of the disks is a mirror of my d drive and a backup drive)... and no I dont really store movies on there either :/
It said my download speed was poo at 1732 Kbits/sec but TBB just gave me a sweet 6898.53 Kbps ( 6.7 Mbps ) (http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/results/id/118760367384056011868.html).. so that will only be the transatlantic thingy.
Aside from that I seem to be ok
Guess I need to sort my Drives out though "Smiles at an empty Western Digital WD3200AAKS"...
/me goes out whilst leaving my C drive to defrag.
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Just defragged:
C:\ 80Gb PATA
D:\ 100GB SATA
G:\ 133 GB SATA (Logical Partition)
10 Minutes :blush:
JkDefrag > http://www.kessels.com/JkDefrag/
Very very small download, used the Windows (ex Diskeeper) engine. Looks absolutely horrible, but does it go!
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I finally decided that it was time to move to XP :(, W2K is OK but has a lot of business and network functionality that I simply don't need and gets in the way. A month ago I was still using ME!
So I went to those nice people at CCL who sold me an OEM XP Home CD for about 46 quid. To qualify for an OEM version you need to get some hardware at the same time, CCL say that even a mouse at 1.99 is sufficient. So, what hardware do I need?
I have 2 Samsung Hard Disks 80Gb PATA and 250GB SATA.
I have 2 Optical drives CD/DVD RAM SATA and CD/DVD ROM PATA
I have a floppy, (you need a floppy to install W2K, install SATA drivers in W2K, flash the ASUS BIOS and to force the 80Gb Samsung to operate in UDMA133 Mode.
I have all the graphics card I need, thank you very much, and a very nice Sony 17" TFT ::).
So I had a look at the installed memory, and I have 2x512Mb Kingston ValueRAM timed at 33333. CCL had a 1gb stick of the same RAM (the part number is the same) for £37.
So I bought it.
I am now using nLite to build an XP Boot CD which allows unattended installation, no need to enter all that tedious information about who you are and where you live, and what's your product code etc etc >:(. You can also not install things that you don't need or want and pre-select which mode all the various services start in.
Everything is backed up to CD or Memory stick, Acronis TrueImage 10 is on order, the SATA Hd is partitioned, formatted and nice and empty. and we are ready to roll.
If you don't hear from me for a few week you know it all went horribly wrong, in which case, a Merry Christmas to all our readers.
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lol... Im sure it will be fine.
For all its stick, I do think XP is one of the best [insert windows] operating systems Ive used. (Still to get to grips with Vista properly as I still need to find some time to give it a serious play.
Good luck.
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I agree Kitz, XP is good and solid once you manage to tame it. It's all too easy to knock microsoft.
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Well, what fun that all was. The nLite CD was a disaster, it ignored half the settings and loaded all the wrong stuff :-X. It has been added to the pile of mug mats
Quick format & try again from the original CD.
I must say that so far I am quite impressed, using Classic Desktop with all the fancy effects turned off. It is very fast (and so it should be with 2Gb of RAM), boots OK from the SATA HD in about 30 seconds and shuts down in 3 seconds.
Busy now replacing all the MS supplied stuff, Picture Viewer goes and in comes IrfanView etc etc.
Even Windows Update went through very quickly.
System is almost silent, I can just about hear the CPU fan, but I can turn that down a smidgen, CPU temp hovers around 38C.
Thus far thus good.
What did we do with ourselves before PCs?
Anybody else remember wet Sundays in the 1950s? ???
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>>> Anybody else remember wet Sundays in the 1950s?
I did worthy tasks, like helping Mummy with the housework. :angel:
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Or listened to Family Favourites on the radio.....
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And of course the Billy Cotton Band Show :'(
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Not forgetting the Black and White Minstrel Show either ;)
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the SATA power connectors are on one cable and are too close together.
Sound just like the first SATA cable I purchased a couple of years ago, although a Stanly blade down the side soon cured that problem.
(my supplier had a whole batch of the faulty "import" cables)
Unattended install:
I tried one once and it automatically installed onto my D: drive.
Now any time I carry out a Install/Re-install I always discount any other drives.
>> .. Anybody else remember wet Sundays in the 1950s?
What's the 1950s, is it a new movie that's just been released :lol:
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Round the Horn with Kenneth Horn.
Jules and Sandy were a hoot, took me years to understand why though. I suspect that they wouldn't dare repeat them now.
The rest of the BBC output was pretty dull through, nothing much has changed since really.
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And of course the Billy Cotton Band Show :'(
"Wakey Wakey!"
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Do you mind, I was just dozing off then ;)
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All well so far, NO nasties in the event logs ;D.
I have moved to OpenDNS for the DNS servers and disabled the XP DNS client with a very noticable increase in responsiveness.
Indexing Service and System Restore have both been stamped on until they stop moving, using Acronis to make an image of C:\ to the second hard disk when appropriate.
I tried singing "I'm being Maxed on Monday" to the tune of "I'm getting married in the morning", but it just don't work ???.
So far ~ very, very happy with the whole setup, I just need faster fingers to keep up with it.
And no, I'm not using that dreadful Tonka Toy theme, classic desktop all the way for me, thank you very much.
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Upgrade went through within the last hour, the results are as follows:
Downstream = 3308
Upstream = 382
Sync = 4896
Not bad at all ;). May even improve during the training period.
How often should I reboot the Router?
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You shouldn't need to reboot the router on a regular basis. Mine (for example) stays running 24/7 and is currently approaching 5 weeks uptime. But some connections are less stable than this, and the router can get itself in a twist and either not resync at all or sync in an unusual mode; that's when you need to reboot.
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Reboot during the training period?
PlusNet recommend this but don't say how often.
Mine is also left on all the time unless there seems to be a problem, which is very rare; unlike the heap I had before.
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'Training period' is a bit of a misnomer. Nothing that happens during this period makes any difference to the way the router behaves after the period is over. It continues to negotiate its connection speed with the exchange every time it re-syncs, and the IP profile is set accordingly. As far as I know, the only thing the training period does is establish a benchmark ('Maximum stable rate') against which any future complaints about speed are measured. So you might like to reboot the router if you get a particularly low speed re-sync, but I can't see much point otherwise.
All of this is my personal opinion. Others may disagree.
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Connection speed is slowly rising to around 4300 :)
Attenuation is up from 49 to 53 Db :(
SNR is down from 12ish to 4ish >:(
Speed tests vary from 1300 to 1900 down from a previous rock solid 1970 +/- 10 ???
52 Losses of synch in 24 hours, very rare before :-X
I've asked PN to look at this and consider whether to put me back on the 2Mb fixed service. They say they can do this within 24hrs.
I might give it a couple of days longer to see if anything improves, but I'm not very hopeful.
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>>> All of this is my personal opinion. Others may disagree.
I totally agree with you.
>> speed is slowly rising to around 4300
which may perhaps be a bit high for your particular connection.
Hopefully things have settled down now and are much more stable now.. it is perfectly normal on some connections to see a fair few disconnects during the first few days, whilst the DLM process figures out whats best on your line.
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Seems to have settled down a bit.
Connection speed shows as 3400
Speed tests show a stable speed of about 2400 down, which is better than the previous speeds on the fixed connection, but not that much better (about 420K) :-\.
Just looked at the DG834 Log and see this:
Wed, 2007-10-03 16:30:10 - Loss of synchronization :1
Wed, 2007-10-03 18:04:12 - Loss of synchronization :2
Wed, 2007-10-03 19:35:44 - Loss of synchronization :3
Wed, 2007-10-03 19:37:44 - Loss of synchronization :4
Wed, 2007-10-03 21:26:46 - Loss of synchronization :5
Thu, 2007-10-04 01:32:48 - LCP down.
Thu, 2007-10-04 01:32:55 - Initialize LCP.
Thu, 2007-10-04 01:32:55 - LCP is allowed to come up.
Thu, 2007-10-04 01:33:56 - Initialize LCP.
Thu, 2007-10-04 01:33:56 - LCP is allowed to come up.
Thu, 2007-10-04 01:34:57 - Initialize LCP.
Thu, 2007-10-04 01:34:57 - LCP is allowed to come up.
Thu, 2007-10-04 01:35:57 - Initialize LCP.
Thu, 2007-10-04 01:35:57 - LCP is allowed to come up.
Thu, 2007-10-04 01:36:58 - Initialize LCP.
Thu, 2007-10-04 01:36:58 - LCP is allowed to come up.
Thu, 2007-10-04 01:37:59 - Initialize LCP.
Thu, 2007-10-04 01:37:59 - LCP is allowed to come up.
Thu, 2007-10-04 01:38:59 - Initialize LCP.
Thu, 2007-10-04 01:38:59 - LCP is allowed to come up.
Thu, 2007-10-04 01:40:00 - Initialize LCP.
Thu, 2007-10-04 01:40:00 - LCP is allowed to come up.
Thu, 2007-10-04 01:41:01 - Initialize LCP.
Thu, 2007-10-04 01:41:01 - LCP is allowed to come up.
Thu, 2007-10-04 01:42:01 - Initialize LCP.
Thu, 2007-10-04 01:42:01 - LCP is allowed to come up.
Thu, 2007-10-04 01:43:02 - Initialize LCP.
Thu, 2007-10-04 01:43:02 - LCP is allowed to come up.
Thu, 2007-10-04 01:44:03 - Initialize LCP.
Thu, 2007-10-04 01:44:03 - LCP is allowed to come up.
Thu, 2007-10-04 01:45:03 - Initialize LCP.
Thu, 2007-10-04 01:45:04 - LCP is allowed to come up.
Thu, 2007-10-04 01:46:04 - Initialize LCP.
Thu, 2007-10-04 01:46:04 - LCP is allowed to come up.
Thu, 2007-10-04 01:47:05 - Initialize LCP.
Thu, 2007-10-04 01:47:05 - LCP is allowed to come up.
Thu, 2007-10-04 01:47:16 - CHAP authentication success
Thu, 2007-10-04 01:49:48 - LCP down.
Thu, 2007-10-04 01:49:50 - Initialize LCP.
Thu, 2007-10-04 01:49:50 - LCP is allowed to come up.
Thu, 2007-10-04 01:50:51 - Initialize LCP.
Thu, 2007-10-04 01:50:51 - LCP is allowed to come up.
Thu, 2007-10-04 01:51:52 - Initialize LCP.
Thu, 2007-10-04 01:51:52 - LCP is allowed to come up.
Thu, 2007-10-04 01:52:53 - Initialize LCP.
Thu, 2007-10-04 01:52:53 - LCP is allowed to come up.
Thu, 2007-10-04 01:53:53 - Initialize LCP.
Thu, 2007-10-04 01:53:53 - LCP is allowed to come up.
Thu, 2007-10-04 01:54:22 - CHAP authentication success
I have no idea what this means, should I worry, should I care ????
What is LCP anyway?
I tried Google and there seems to be a lot of people asking the same question, but the answers are many and varied. Most seem to blame Microfilters, but I don't have any of them connected, the RJ45(11?) cable goes from the router straight into the BT ADSL faceplace. The only thing that has changed around here is that it has stopped raining.
If there is an equipment fault then it can only be the router or the cable, can't it. Otherwise it's over to BT.
Speaking of BT, No 1 Daughter is having horrendous problems. They have 2 lines into the house and would like to tranfer the ADSL from No 1 Line (the original) to no 2 Line. No 1 Line would then be disconnected. There are good reasons for this which are far to complicated to go into here (No 1 Line was for a business).
BT can't set up ADSL on No 2 Line because there are flags on the line indicating that BT have already set ADSL. BT say they are not their flags but belong to a 3rd party provider. The Organisation that administers the flags say they are BT flags and can quote all the relevant reference Nos. BT say they have no trace and therefore can't remove the flags :-X. She has been spending up to 4 hours on the phone at a time for the last 2 weeks trying to sort this one out.
My head hurts.
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Means you had a "sticky" patch last night :/
Theres no CHAP showing there for quite a while - so either you couldnt connect to the RAS RADIUS or your ISP for some reason.
Normally it would show when you cant connect to your ISP because either your passy is wrong/ or the ISP is busy.
I think we can discount the invalid login..
I know PN have just installed yet another new central so I doubt its that either as they now seem to have things very much under control and back on track.
I'm not aware of any platform problems as my router logs are fine... so pass.
Because of the time - perhaps BT were doing some work between at the RAS?
I honestly dont know.
Would need a more detailed analysis of your router logs to say for sure.
On the Netgear it has to be in debug mode and they can then be found http://192.168.0.1/ppp_log
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What is LCP anyway?
I tried Google and there seems to be a lot of people asking the same question, but the answers are many and varied.
Something that I know a lil bit about - but I'll admit Im no big expert on protocols - however it is something Ive looked into in the past and what I do know:-
LCP is link control protocol.
- When you sync to the exchange a very basic PPP session is established which is used to set up LCP.
- LCP is a 2 part process responsible for setting up a link between you and the remote RADIUS server (2 stages because with IPStream it happens with BTs RADIUS servers at the RAS and then at a later stage again with the ISP RADIUS server)
- Once the (LCP) link has been set up THEN it has to be authenticated this is a multi stage process
[1]onto the BTw Network - (BT authenticates the @plusdsl.net)
[2]The ISP - (Plusnet authenticate the username@)
- This is the CHAP process when you have full internet access.
Theres a diagram on my site which shows the full stages of
adsl authentication (http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/images/l2tpauthentication.gif).
A bit more info that isnt shown on there
Stages 1-4 are initiation of the PPP session and communication with the RAS (shown as LAC on the diagram)
Stages 5-6 is stage 1 of authentication on to the BTw network via BTs RADIUS servers and the bit where on some router logs it shows the RAS eg "ESR7.Ilford5"
Stages 7-14 & 15-22 Setting up an LT2P tunnel with the ISPs Central Pipe (The bit that hides all the BT routing when we do a tracert). This stage is also where all the stuff happens re the routing to the ISPs PoP after the ISP realm has been verified (SSB).
Stages 23-24 is where some router logs show eg "PTE-AG2" and authentication on to the PlusNet network.
Most seem to blame Microfilters
Nothing to do with microfilters at all.. its way past that stage.
You have PPP so youre connecting to the exchange ok
You have LCP so youre at least reaching either the exchange and/or the RAS.
It goes belly up after that (not reaching either BTs or your ISPs RADIUS servers)
*Please note that the above information only applies to BTw IPStream adsl.
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BT can't set up ADSL on No 2 Line because there are flags on the line indicating that BT have already set ADSL. BT say they are not their flags but belong to a 3rd party provider. The Organisation that administers the flags say they are BT flags and can quote all the relevant reference Nos. BT say they have no trace and therefore can't remove the flags . She has been spending up to 4 hours on the phone at a time for the last 2 weeks trying to sort this one out.
If shes having problems getting an adsl tag removed on the line - or because no-one is taking ownership for the tag, then there is a special BT number that you can call which may be worth a try :-
BT Wholesale Tel: 0800 169 0934
Open hours: Monday – Friday 8am – 6pm. Saturday – 8am – 12pm
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Gosh!
I think I understood some of that ;)
It seems to happen mainly in the wee small hours, so we will blame those rascally BT Engineers having a party in the exchange. But I will keep an eye on it.
Ta ever so.
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Just seen your second post, I was going to send her the Info via E-Mail, just stopped myself in time. I will ring her termorrer.
Let you know how it all works out.
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>> Gosh!
>> I think I understood some of that
Gosh!
I'm surpised cause I just rambled :lol: