Fixing Windows Network Quickly

As it is today, many home owners have Personal Computers at home and is connected to the internet. Having an internet connection at home is no longer a luxury but a necessity in some areas or almost all over the world. But as machines do, problems will be encountered with your computer either in the hardware or software. Even if you have a PC at home, you still need a network to have an internet. Setting up and maintaining your home PC network is now much more easier with the Windows 7. Although it is easy, not all problems are addressed from Windows 7′s control panel.

Here is a compiled list of common networking problems and their quick fixes.

Reset Your IP address

If your network connection is unreliable or you are getting error conflict messages that your IP address is already in use, try renewing your IP address.

Here’s what you have to do:

• Click on the Start Button, navigate to the Command Prompt (Start Menu, All Programs, Accessories, Command Prompt), Right click it and select Run as administrator from the menu.
• This will open the Command Prompt window with Administrator privileges. At the C:\Windows\system32\ prompt, type ipconfig/release and press Enter to release your current IP address (you will lose your network connection at this point).
• Information on your network connection will scroll down in the Command Prompt.
• After you have renewed your IP address, type exit at the prompt and press Enter to close the command prompt window

Flush your DNS Cache
When browsing on the internet, after you type a URL into a web browser, your PC asks your Domain Name Service server (DNS server) to translate that into an IP address, and caches that information. At times, the cache can become outdated and corrupted which can cause internet connection problems. To clear your DNS cache:

• Open the Command Prompt with the Administrator privileges.
• When its opened, type ipconfig/flushdns and press Enter.

Power Cycle your Modem/Router the Right Way
At times, your broadband modem may occasionally become unreliable and one way to quickly fix that is to restart it. It is also the same for the connection between your router and broadband modem.



To restart your broadband, here’s what you have to do:

• Disconnect their power cables
• Leave the modem and router off for 30 seconds or so
• Connect the modem’s power cable to restore its power first
• Wait a few moments for the modem to renegotiate its connection to the Web and establish a link
• Restore power to the router

Disable and Add Exclusions to Windows Firewall
If you have a Windows 7 OS, it will constantly ask you to allow or deny an application’s network traffic. If you have mistakenly blocked or unblocked an application(or the other way around), you can manually change some settings in the Windows Firewall control panel.
Here’s what you have to do:

• Click on the Start button, type Allowed Applications in the search field, and then press Enter
• A window will pop up and show you applications that you can check or uncheck. Also, applications installed on the system that are flagged by Windows Firewall.
• If you want to unblock an application that you previously blocked, click on the Change Settings button, allowing access over Home/Work and/or Public networks. Conversely, if you like to allow a previously blocked program access, find it on the list and click the boxes next to the entry.

Diagnosing Internet Connection Issues
Find out the status or issues on your connection can be accessible with a few utilities built into Windows 7 which can help you. Using the pint tracert (traceroute) can help you find out if your internet issues are with your home network or with your ISP(Internet Service Provider).


Performing a continuous ping on a known good website will allow you to constantly monitor a connection and see if packets are being lost or the connection is dropping.

• Open your Command Prompt (Start Menu, All Programs, Accessories, Command Prompt) and type ping facebook.com -t or any other site you want to use and press Enter.

If the connection is stable and reliable, you won’t see any errors or ‘request timed out’ but replies from IP address with ping times and other data. If, however, the connection between your PC and Google is broken for whatever reason, ping will report that there was no response from the server or “request timed out” will show.
Tracert is another useful tool that will list the route and measure transit delays of packets across a network. To use Tracert,

• Open a Command Prompt window and type tracert google.com.

This will essentially map out the path from your PC to a Google server, listing the IP addresses of the servers and switches in between. Usually your packet’s first few hops will start in your home network, then go through your ISP’s network, then eventually find their way to google.com, so if the packet doesn’t make it out of your network, something is wrong inside your network; and if it stops only one or two hops after it leaves your network, your ISP probably has a network outage or equipment failure on its end.

Credits go to PCWorld for the information and Marco Chiappetta.

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