Computer stops accessing internet

[playofwords]

Hello,

I am trying out WinGate/GateKeeper 5.2.3 build 901. WinGate is installed on Win XP pro which acts as my server.

There are 2 other systems with Win XP home for clients

One of the systems stops accessing internet after a while, usually between half an hour to an hour after booting up.

If I restart this system once or twice, it has internet access again.

This is a new problem with the system after WinGate was installed on the server.

Thanks for your help in advance.

[MattP]

Hi,

Is it always the same client that stops accessing the internet? Have you disabled ICS and personal firewall in all machines? What IP addresses are you using? How are your clients connecting to the WinGate server, ie a NAT connection (with default gateway and DNS of the clients pointing at the internal NIC of the WinGate server), straight proxy or the WGIC?

Regards,

Matt

[playofwords]

Thanks for replying Matt,

Yes, it is always the same client that fails after few minutes of access (I have just 2 clients). I get the access back after rebooting once or twice. The settings on server are almost all defaults. I have NAT enabled on server. IP range for clients is 192.168.0.x

The system that always works is a desktop and it has wingate client installed.

The system that fails is a laptop, does not have wingate client installed. I even reinstalled a clean recovery image of OS, and updated to latest patches. After booting up and logging in,the laptop can always access internet for few minutes usually about half an hour or so, sometimes less sometimes more (even upto 3 to 4 hours sometimes). During this time, it works fine, I can surf, download, access other desktop and server, ping them with out any problem, and then suddenly it stops accessing. The only thing I can note is the access seems to always stop when I am surfing. Once the laptop stops, I check if I still have access to internet on other machines, and I do , for both desktop client and server.

I have not enabled ICS on any of the systems. The desktop has norton firewall and norton antivirus. It works with out problems.

The laptop (the one that fails) does not have firewall or antivirus as I have reinstalled the OS image.

The wingate server has norton antivirus, and I have enabled its firewall.

My knowledge of networking is quite sparse so I might not be able to provide all info. Please let me know where to look for details.

[MattP]

What happens when you can't browse the internet? Do you get any error messages? Do you see the client connection on the activity screen in WinGate? Can you ping the server when you lose the browsing?

If you can't can you open a DOS window and type ipconfig /all then list what you see.

Thanks,

Matt

[adrien]

Hi

The machine not using the WinGate client, will be using WinGate's ENS driver, which supports Network Address Translation (NAT).

This will probably conflict with the Norton Firewall you have installed on the server. The client using the WinGate Client wouldn't be using this, which would be why it is not affected.

WinGate has its own firewall built-in. Have you tried disabling the Norton firewall on the WinGate machine?

Adrien

[playofwords]

This will probably conflict with the Norton Firewall you have installed on the server. The client using the WinGate Client wouldn't be using this, which would be why it is not affected.
Adrien

Thanks for your reply Adrien

My sentence was not clear in prevous post.I have updated it.
---------------------
The server has norton antivirus but does not have norton firewall. The server has WinGate firewall enabled

The desktop cllient (which works all time) has both norton antivirus and norton firewall.

The laptop (which fails) does not have either antivirus or firewall and is a clean OS)
----------------------

What happens when you can't browse the internet? Do you get any error messages? Do you see the client connection on the activity screen in WinGate? Can you ping the server when you lose the browsing?
Matt

Matt,

I don't get any error message except the usual message of page can not be displayed.

I haven't tired pinging the server, I will do it the next time system stops internet access. I will check the activity screen too.

Thanks

[playofwords]

Hi Matt,

Another thing I noticed after WinGate installation was I lost access to every shared folder on the server. The folders are not accessible from any systems, not even from server system! If I try to access the shared folders from 'My Network Places' in file explorer (on server or any other system), error msg box is displayed with "\\system-name\shared-folder-name is not accessible. You might not have permission to use this network resource. Contact the administrator of this server to find out if you have access permissions. Not enough server storge is available to process this command". This happens to shared folders that were created before WinGate installation and after. This happens even to the shared folders that have full access permissions for everyone.

I can access shared folders on desktop and latop from any of the 3 systems.

-------------

The next time I lost internet access on laptop, I did a check as you suggested in your previous post.

I had only IE 6 and lastest version of yahooIm open, and only activity I was performing on laptop was surfing, when the access stopped

For desktop, as usual there were no problems, it continued to work fine. Activity for desktop in activity screen remained.

For the laptop, at the time access stopped, the activity screen showed active NAT connections (TCP,UDP) , all of which slowly disappeared in few minutes.

I could ping from desktop to server, but not from desktop to laptop
I could ping from server to desktop, but not from server to laptop
from laptop, I could not ping the desktop or the server
on laptop, I could properly ping localhost

The D-link hub shows lights flickering for all 3 connections at all times.

After I restarted the laptop, all 3 systems could ping each other, and internet access was available on all systems.

As I could not even ping the desktop from laptop, perhaps this is problem is not related to WinGate?

Thanks
Prem

[adrien]

so do the hub lights flicker even when nothing is happening?

I would check for viruses on the server. If there is a process running on your server called wupdate.exe, you have one of the latest nasties going around. It is very disruptive of networking and general computer operation, doing syn floods etc.

Adrien

[playofwords]

I would check for viruses on the server. If there is a process running on your server called wupdate.exe, you have one of the latest nasties going around. It is very disruptive of networking and general computer operation, doing syn floods etc.
Adrien

I could not find wupdate.exe in task manager of any of 3 systems. Does it run always or is it periodic? The laptop is a clean install with all latest patches. The server and desktop have norton antivirus. In addition to automatic update which I have noticed happens couple of times a week, I update the antivirus definitions every day manually by downloading and running the file from symmantec website. So I hope it is not a virus problem? I have not noticed any memory or process problems. All 3 systems seem to run fine as they did when they were installed.

Could you please suggest some freeware or eval tool I could use to monitor my lan for abnormal network activity for few days? Specailly some tool that can pinpoint which process and which ports have high traffic? or perhaps direct me to another forum or mailing list ion nternet specific to same topic? I barely have any idea when it comes to networking.

Thanks
Prem

[MattP]

Are you running Kaspersky AntiVirus for WinGate? If so then you can tell it to scan a drive and have it scan the laptop (make sure that you've got connectivity first!).

If you download and install NetPatrol from our website (it comes with a 30 day free trial) then you'll also get an application called PortList, if you run PortList on the laptop it will tell you the name of the applications that are listening for traffic.

When you say you can ping localhost on the laptop when you lose access, did you ping the actual IP address, ie 192.168.0.3 or did you ping 127.0.0.1? If you didn't, can you try the IP address?

Next time it happens can you try and stop the WinGate engine and see if you can ping?

Thanks,

Matt

[wencs]

Hello,

I am trying out WinGate/GateKeeper 5.2.3 build 901. WinGate is installed on Win XP pro which acts as my server.

There are 2 other systems with Win XP home for clients

One of the systems stops accessing internet after a while, usually between half an hour to an hour after booting up.

If I restart this system once or twice, it has internet access again.

This is a new problem with the system after WinGate was installed on the server.

[wencs]

Hello,

I am trying out WinGate/GateKeeper 5.2.3 build 901. WinGate is installed on (Win XP Pro, Windows 2000 Profesional Servipack 4, Windows 2003 Server) which acts as my server.

There are 5 other systems with Win XP Profesional, Windows 2000, Windows ME for clients

One of the systems stops accessing internet after a while, usually between half an hour to an hour after booting up.

If I restart this system once or twice, it has internet access again.

This is a new problem with the system after WinGate was installed on the server.