I’ve been helping a neighbor with his new PC purchase. To say he’s at a disadvantage is an understatement. He has a limited formal education, speaks broken English, and has no conceptual schema for the world of the computer whatsoever. He’s recently purchased a PC running XP and has upgraded his dialup to qwest dsl.
IE won’t access his private IP address or anything else for that matter. We can ping the modem. In fact, we can ping anything in the ether we want both using IP and URL. So, we have verified that the modem works and is configured properly (I’m able to browse w/o problem with my Mac laptop). But IE won’t browse.
Qwest has verified the computers LAN is properly configured.
With the help of his previous ISP he’s erased any software that their CDs had installed.
With the help of his computer manufacturer he’s cleanly reinstalled XP twice.
I’ve installed alternate browsers (Ffox and Opera) and can’t browse with them either.
So, that’s the extent of my PC-troubleshooting knowledge. Anyone out there have any advice (short of selling the crap to some sucker and buying a Mac)?