Cannot communicate with Primary DNS Server(192.168.254.254)

Manually set the laptop's DNS to a known DNS server. Download Steve Gibson's DNSBench

Find the fastest DNS servers Might help []'s

Can you ping the router? Presumably, it's also at 192.168.254.254. If ping fails, check your encryption (WEP/WPA/WPA2) settings on the laptop and make sure you're actually connected. Check the worthless Vista Network and Swearing Center and make sure that it looks something like this:

Notice the (hidden) wireless connection status and signal strength.

That's a rather odd DNS server IP. If your router is at the default of 192.168.1.1, then something or someone has configured a static IP for the DNS server, and probably for the IP address on the laptop. Probably someone being "helpful". Check the IP address and DNS address settings for the wireless interface and make sure they're set to obtain their values using DHCP.

Many laptops have a slide switch to enable and disable the wireless. Check if it's on.

A common problem is that the laptop thinks it's still wherever you used it last. With Vista, run: Right click on the MSDOS window and select "run as Administrator" ipconfig /release wait about 10 seconds. ipconfig /renew ipconfig /all (to see what happened. check the DNS servers)

If you were at a hotel that uses a proxy server, make sure that you don't have a proxy server configured.

In Firefox, it's Tools -> Options -> Network -> Settings Select "no proxy".

In Internet Exploder, it's Tools -> Internet Options -> Connections -> LAN settings Uncheck everything.

Jeff:

Yes the laptop is connected to the router because I can see the rest of the network from the laptop and I can see the laptop from the network. The router is located at 192.168.1.1 and I can ping it from the laptop. But I can't ping anything else. The slide switch is set correctly and the light is on indicated an active connection. The LAN settings are unchecked and there is no proxy server configured. No one has touched the laptop other than myself. The picture you gave me a link to looks like the I get on the laptop except for the big red X between the home-network and Internet indicating that there is no internet access.

The laptop spent the summer at a second residence connected to a Siemens router with an address of 192.168.254.254. Just before I left on Monday morning, I got the "Blue Screen of Death" and then rebooted. The laptop connected to the Siemens router with no problems and I had internet access. I have no idea what caused the blue screen which was the one I've had with the 2 year old Sony Vaio laptop.

I ran ipconfig /release and ipconfig /renew and the DNS Servers still have

192.168.254.254 listed. Any more suggestions?

Bob

Meanwhile, at the alt.internet.wireless Job Justification Hearings, Bobster chose the tried and tested strategy of:

It sounds like you've got a DNS server manually configured on that interface. If it doesn't answer DNS queries then the symptom you'll get is no internet access. However, if it's just a DNS misconfiguration, you'll still be able to ping the internet by IP [eg 8.8.8.8]. Of course by this point you may have broken something else as well in your eagerness to fix it ;-)

be of some assistance in working out how to automatically acquire DNS server settings. Failing that, you could set your DNS to 8.8.8.8 and it would probably work.

That fixed it. For Internet Protocol Version 4, the "Use the following DNS server address" was checked and was set to 198.168.254.254. I checked the "Obtain DNS server address automatically" and that fixed it. Thanks.

You already found the answer, but I just wanted to point out that the culprit was detailed in the above paragraph, which you apparently missed. However, I may have created some confusion when I suggested that you "Check the IP address and DNS address settings...". I didn't mean put a check mark in the box. I meant "Verify that the IP address and DNS address settings...".

Just wondering if you kill filtered me, Steve Gibson, or DNS Bench. My solution would have solved his problem, and speeded up his DNS searches, probably without feeding the ever-growing 8888 and 8884 google intelligence gathering bots. FWIW []'s

My kill file only has one idiot from the cellular groups in it.

May I point out that your suggestion will work quite well, but only for someone familiar with how to setup static DNS IP addresses, and generally know their way around Windoze networking. I've found that I usually have to provide at least a clue as to what to change, where to change it, and what it should look like on the screen. For example, does one manually add the DNS servers IP's in the router, and have the clients point to router to take advantage of DNS caching in the router, or does one insert the DNS servers in the client config, and bypass the router? This question usually appears every time someone configures anything besides the DHCP assigned servers from the ISP. Just knowing a fastest DNS server isn't enough. You should explain how to configure it.

I don't use DNS Bench much.

It's ok, but I like Google's NameBench better:

It does take much longer, but seems to produce more interesting results.

As for Steve Gibson, I ignore his advice on security issues, but find that he sometimes comes up with some useful comments and useful utilities. I sometimes see him on Leo Laporte's TechTV show.

I don't have any opinions on Google DNS other than it works quite well. If you have an issue, there's OpenDNS.

Thats the standard LAN configuration (192.168.254.0/24 - .254 GW/DNS proxy address) at least two DSL providers on the right coast use for the combo modem-routers they provide.

I should hope not. The ISP controls the routeable WAN IP address delivered to the customers router, but usually doesn't exercise any control over what the customer does on the LAN side. If the ISP supplied management services or ran their home network remotely, maybe the ISP has some preferences in IP address layout. There's also a possibility that they're offering VPN services, which requires selecting the 3rd octet of the IP address (that's the first 254) to be unique, so that there's no IP address duplication on both sides of the VPN tunnel. However, from what I've seen on the left coast, the ISP could care less what the customer does on their side of the router.

My guess(tm) is that your east coast DSL providers are using older Alcatel, Efficient, Speedstream, Netopia, or Siemens hardware, which defaults to 192.168.254.254. The current mutations of these DSL devices, as delivered by Motorola, use 192.168.1.254.

Yes, that equipment was involved. Until very very recently one of the ISPs used to flash custom firmware. The user could only view a minimalist version of the standard web pages that were available on the internal web server. If you didn't like 192.168.254.0 that was too bad.

Yep. AT&T DSL uses custom firmware, with a limited subset of features available. The previous series of Siemens/Efficient DSL modems (4100/4200) were quite powerful, but only if the ISP chose to enable features:

In Australia, Optus, Telstra, and TransACT also have radically crippled firmware. I've played with firmware transplants on the AT&T version of the 4100, "bricked" two in the process, managed to downgrade one, and gave up. Oh well.

Meanwhile, at the alt.internet.wireless Job Justification Hearings, George chose the tried and tested strategy of:

I'm using a BT Homehub 2.0B as an N access point. It's crippled so that it will only accept an IP address that falls within 192.168.0.0/16. Anything else results in "That is not a valid HomeHub IP address". Oh well, it was free, can't complain too much.