Lost connectivity, can't ping

[Cec Britton]

I have a small 4 computer network with a HP network deskjet printer on it. Two of the computers are wired and are running Win2k Professional. The other two computers are wireless with one on Win2k Pro and the other using XP Professional. I just recently lost printer connectivity on my gateway (wired) computer. During troubleshooting, I found that I can ping the loopback address 127.0.0.1, but I can not ping any external device including the router, from the gateway computer. I can however access the Internet and I can see all the other computers on the network using "My Network Places".

The "nbtstat -c" command returns IP addresses and device names for the printer and the other computers when I issue it from the gateway computer.

I tried pinging with the other 3 computers and they can ping anything on the network except the gateway machine. I can also print over the network on the other computers. This tells me the problem is on the gateway computer and since I have Internet access I assume that my network cable and card are working okay. That leads me to believe that I have a software problem so I tried uninstalling and reinstalling TCP/IP on the gateway computer but that did not correct the problem. I have checked any error logs that seem pertinent but don't find any errors connected to the ping failure.

Since I don't print all that often I don't know when the problem occurred so trying to tie it to some system change is futile.

I should also mention that I have tried turning off AV and firewall software to see if that would correct the problem but it did not.
:confused:
Can someone please offer a suggestion as to what has gone wrong?

Thanks in advance for any assistance.

[Variable]

If you have a computer what purpose does the gateway computer serve? Is it running ISA? Does all traffic run from router -> Gateway PC -> hub -> other devices? Just because ping will not work does not mean that is the problem with printing. Ping is a good diagnostic tool but many things block it for rally no reason at all on an internal network. It is a security "feature" that does more harm than good when troubleshooting. If you are connected to the printers using netBIOS name rather than IP's fir instance the problem could be with NETBIOS names. Since you used Net BIOS utility to check the names and see they are connected then that leads me to believe that it could be IP. Can you ping the netBIOS names? Without knowing how the network is set up and what the gateway PC is doing it is hard to say with any certainty. These are just educated shots in the dark.

[Cec Britton]

Problem resolved. Unininstalled the network adapter, rebooted and installed the network adapter. Uninstalled TCP/IP, rebooted and reinstalled TCP/IP. Rebooted and everything worked as normal again. :p