All systems go!

[rivka]

Thanks to the combined efforts of curiousangel, Ben, and an anonymous nice guy at the Comcast help desk, my new computer is now properly hooked up to our home network and thus to the Internet. We haven't yet solved the problem of transfering files from my old computer to my new one, but Ben's working on it. Yay Ben!

We'd originally been conisdering some drastic solutions to the unable-to-network problem, including ditching Windows XP and installing a more cooperative version of Windows. Now that that's clearly not going to be necessary, I've been able to go ahead and install all my software. I'm going to have to buy an upgrade for my reference manager, and I bought MS Office 2000 Professional at work for $25, but the rest of my older software seems to be working.

Oooh, this is exciting. I'd been running Windows 95 on an old tired machine. I feel so powerful.

Comments

WinXP problem

[aiglet.livejournal.com]

WindowsXP doesn't have the ability to connect to local networks. You're going to have to upgrade to XPProfessional to be able to get the networking capabilities.

We have learned this, much to our regret, at Help Desk, from all the froshies calling in and not being able to get into our Ethernet networks with XPHome. :(

Re: WinXP problem

[rivka.livejournal.com]

*blink* But I am networked now.

Unless my post and your response were fragments of a collective hallucination.

Re: WinXP problem

[curiousangel.livejournal.com]

WindowsXP doesn't have the ability to connect to local networks. You're going to have to upgrade to XPProfessional to be able to get the networking capabilities.

Not exactly, I fear. WinXP Home has some network capabilities, but the ones it has are designed more toward home and small office networks. The Network Setup Wizard has several options available, and WinXP provides some advice about configurations.

It does look like it's incapable of handling a LAN connection like the ones you're supporting, except maybe by choosing the "connect through a hub" option and enabling DHCP, and that seems like a boneheaded oversight on Microsoft's part.

[wcg.livejournal.com]

Congratulations to all concerned for getting it to work. I know it was frustrating having all that wonderful computing power isolated from the net.

All systems go except maybe email

[mamatiger.livejournal.com]

Don't get too excited. I just tried to send wcg an email from my new
comcast.net account, and got a lovely letter back from abs.net telling me
that my email couldn't be delivered because comcast.net is blocked by spamcop.net.


See:
stmp.comcast.net blacklisted by spamcop.net here (http://spamcop.net/w3maction=checkblock&ip=24.153.64.2).

Re: All systems go except maybe email

[mamatiger.livejournal.com]

Rats, wrong URL, that should be:
http://spamcop.net/w3m?action=checkblock&ip=24.153.64.2
(I somehow missed that '?' in there.)

Re: All systems go except maybe email

[curiousangel.livejournal.com]

I looked at the spamcop.net help page and found the following:

This blocking list is experimental and should not be used in a production environment where legitimate email must be delivered.

The description of the algorithm used for deciding whether to block a host may be out of date, and is subject to change without notice.

There is no warranty associated with using this system. It is provided as is.

This guy running the site seems to have a good idea about blocking spam, but his implementation seems... quirky. Anyway, there seems to be some sort of algorithm involved that changes a server's spam rating on a day-to-day basis. Email may go through soon enough.