"Told him to set his speed from auto to 10Mbps\half duplex"
thats probably not a good choice, Auto is the only real option, i could go into why but lets just say most end users duplex firmware/kit is somewhat broken, and the real fix for virtually all these MS induced APIPA problems is below.
"VM have been round and the engineer was able to connect to the net with his laptop."
presumably he pluged his Laptop into the same problem CM and it just worked, therefore its not the VM CM at fault, its most likely the MAC on the Pci ethernet inside the problem PC, see below.
virtually no VM tech (other than you lot that have read my posts here) iv ever asked over the years knows almost nothing about why it happens, let alone solving the real problem of this sometimes broken combination, hence the usual endless "use the cli ,type bla bla /release etc".
that Microsoft service, Automatic Private IP Address(APIPA) assigning those almost useless 169.*.*.* addresses When your computer is unable to find a DHCP server cause far more problems than they cure.
at least a generic 192.*.*.* LAN Ip would have been far more useful as a generic default, but thats MS for you, take an industry standard dhcpd and mess it up.
the very first thing to do is check his generic MAC address of that lan card he's using.
heres some generic problem solving info i gave out elsewere many times, the problem is basicly
the NTL/VM CM firmwares+MS PCi combinations doesnt seem to always like a problem PCi NIC with a generic MAC of 00.00.00.00 when working inside windows, it works perfectly fine though with Slax and most other OS's for instance.
so get a slax livecd to do a quick test as it's driver set usually works with most generic PC chipsets.
the basic problem and fix is you need to chance your PCi ethernet cards MAC address to a real No, see below on how to do that.
http://www.slax.org/
keep in mind the slax liveCD is just for you to do a quick test of your pc without need to install or change anything in your windows PC settings, just download/burn and boot the liveCD and it will start directly off the CD and allow you to browse the web.
if it did allow browsing,then you now know the NTL/VM CM works with your PC hardware and what the real problem is, so just try that slax liveCD first as it's quick and easy for most generic RTL NICs and related kit, sis900 etc testing.
if his machine had a SIS900 LAN chip on a motherboard for instance, these and the old blue official USB-to-RJ45 adaptors that NTL supplyed when pluged into a windows OS machine seem to have a MAC of 00.00.00.00 and it appears the 250/255 at least dont like that generic MAC on PCi sometimes.
however the official blue USB-to-RJ45 dongles above work fine,
this problem only ever shows itself on some PCi Ethernets cards with rom installed MAC's of 00.00.00.00
you can solve that by entering your own MAC or do as i did ,just get and boot a linux liveCD
ftp.slax.org and that gives you a valid MAC that you can put into replace the default 00.00.00.00 MAC on the windows side.
you can just as easy use the slax liveCD to register the cable modem and enter your details etc, but you might want to save off your details to a USB stick/HD for later reference etc in windows.
if your slax gives you a MAC No. of say A1:B2:C3:E4 use that working MAC inside windows.
open your 'network connections' find the lan card thats pluged directly into the cable modem, open its 'properties', click 'configure' ,'advanced' and 'network address', enter the new MAC No. as
A1B2C3E4 not A1:B2:C3:E4 or A1.B2,C3,E4 and your done."
so there you have a possible fix and at least a simple test of your PC kit as it stands now.
at the end of the day, some, perhaps many PCi ethernet cards have generic MAC No.s of 00.00.00.00 pre-programed into their firmware roms, and that in combination with windows and the VM CM firmware does'nt always work first time.
the fix is to simply software change the ethernet MAC No. to something else and it will then just work.
getting a valid new MAC to put in the windows registry is up to you but the SLAX above can give you that easy enough.....
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