My Acer desktop Aspire XC 704 W has lost its connection to internet

The PC is still on version 1803 of windows 10, but after the latest update I get a message that there is no internet when trying to connect via cable to the router. I can connect to the internet via wifi to the router, but I get a weak signal as the Acer PC is in another room. I have 2 HP PCs that connect to the internet either via cable or wifi and they both work perfectly. Is there an updated driver to the Network card or other component that will function with windows 10? I updated to version 1803 a long time ago and the PC has installed some smaller up-dates since, but it was when I was going to update to version 1903 that the problem was there. I do not switch the Acer PC on every week as it is connected to my TV set and I have not had use for it lately

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billsey

Never mid my comment on your other post...

Which Acer do you have, give the full model number if you can so we can look up which hardware you have. The diagnosis will be different depending on whether your hardware is working right, do you get a ethernet connection, but no internet access or does the ethernet not connect at all?

Goren

I have an Acer Aspire XC 704 W as I wrote in the headline. Its SNID is XXXXXXXXXX. [Edited by Acer - David as personal information shared] I have a cable connection directly to the internet provider, i.e. not through the router, and I can also connect via wifi to the router. I had not used the PC for a week or so and almost every time I have used it, it has made up-dates, mostly of the virus protection. I can connect to the internet via wifi but if I try the cable route I get a message that there is no internet. A fault search gives no clue. One of my printers lost the scanner function when I updated to Windows 10 version 1903 in my HP PC but there I found out one had to down-load a new scanner driver and after I did that it worked. Therefore I suspected I may need to get new drivers for one or several components in the PC hardware. All other equipment works, so there is nothing wrong with my internet hardware. If I need to download and install new drivers I will have to do it via my HP PC and transfer the software packages to the Acer PC via USM memories.

billsey

I'm confused, is the ethernet cable connected to the router or to a cable modem? If to a cable modem then it's likely your service provider only allows one address lease and so you're not getting an IP address. If it's connected to your router, is the port configured for a static address or dynamic (DHCP)?

Goren

I am sorry. I gave you the wrong information in my first message. The Acer PC is connected directly to the main outlet box in my hallway. The internet provider runs an optical cable to our condo and in the basement the signals are decoded into electrical signals and then transferred to a box in our hallways. You could call it a modem but it is not one where you have to dial up on the telephone lines. My internet provider allows several network cables in the box in the hallway and the Acer PC worked fine two weeks ago. I can put in 4 cables in the outlet box and if I connect a router I can run as many units as I Iike. Currently I run the Acer PC directly and two HP PCs via the router, one on cable from the router, which is cabled to the box in my hallway, and the other one on wifi from the router. I also run two android phones and a series of smart light bulbs on the router wifi. My question is: has any update from Microsoft caused a component in the Acer PC to no longer be recognized and does it need a new driver? If that is not the case I may just take the Acer to the scrap yard and buy a PC that lasts a bit longer such as a HP PC. The Acer PC cannot connect to the intenet via cable, but it receives the wifi signal from the router. There is absolutely nothing wrong with any other hardware as the HP PCs work as before and I know that the cable from the hallway provides a signal as it is lit up and I have even tried a brand new cable to check if it was a cable issue, and it was not. English is not my native language and I may have used the wrong terminology on some items, but I hope that the explanation herein will suffice.

billsey

OK, so it sounds like the box in your hallway is a router, it provides both wired and wireless connections to your devices and translates the local IP addresses into the public address provided by the ISP. This is actually the normal way things are done, it's just a little more complicated in a multi-tenant building. There should be no restrictions on how many devices you connect to your router, other than the subnet size (254 devices, since 0 and 255 are reserved) and the physical ports (likely four ports on the router, plus all the wifi connections). I gather the ISP administers the box for you?

Anyway, let's try and figure out what's going on with the Acer. With the cable disconnected bring up Device Manager and look for anything that's flagged as not working. The ethernet adapter should be under Network Adapters. Could you read the name it has and post it here? There are many different kinds and each uses a different set of software to work it. If there's no problem shown with that adapter bring up Network and Sharing Center and then plug the ethernet cable in. Does a new network show up under Active Networks? If so wait for a while for it to populate itself fully and click on it. From the window that opens click on Details and let us know what all the numbers are.

Goren

It is now past midnight here, so I will make all the moves you suggest tomorrow. I do not think it matters, but the box in my hallway is no router - it is simply a signal divider so that several items can be hooked up to the internet. The Acer PC is connected directly to that box via cable. All other equipment is connected to the router which in turn receives its signal from the hallway box via cable. The Acer PC is at a distance from the router but it still receives the WiFi signal from it and it seems to be connecting to the internet that way, but due to the distance from the router it gets a weak signal, so the connection is interrupted at intervals. Unfortunately I have no monitor close to the router that fits the Acer PC so I cannot check it out by bringing it to the router. As I said the Acer PC is hooked up to my TV set and that item is too heavy to by carried around my flat. I am telling you this so you know what options we have in the fault finding process. There is one way of trying out the router WiFi connection and that is to move the router to the TV room, but that involves a lot of work, so it is a last resort.

Goren

OK. Now I have tried to do what you suggested. Note however that we have a language problem as my Acer speaks Swedish or at the best Swinglish and I tried to look up device manager on pages claiming to have all IT terminology, but they didn´t. Is Device Manager the Control Panel?

Anyway I got no flags when starting up without the cable. I made print screens of what I saw but there is no way I can send those to you so I will write it all down:

Under the heading properties for Ethernet it says connect with Realtek PCIe GBE Family Controller. Under tab network I have: Client for Microsoft Network, File and Printer sharing; QoS Packet Scheduler; Realtec IO AC Protocol Driver, Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4), Microsoft Network Adapter Multiplex Control (NOT ticked), Microsoft LLDP Protocol Driver, Internet Protocol Version 6 (TCP/IPv6), Link-Layer Topology Discovery Responder, Link-Layer Topology Discovery Mapper I/O Driver. They are all ticked (v) except where I wrote NOT ticked.

On re-plugging the cable nothing happened so I took a shot at creating a new network and I was told there is no internet.

I then managed to find a heading "Status of Ethernet" and there it said IPv4-connection - no internet and IPv6-connection - no network. There was a diagnostics link I clicked and then I got the following message:

Your PC seems to be correctly configured but the unit or resource (DNS-server) does not respond.

billsey

Are you using all the wired ports on the back of the router? Best would be to plug the Acer in there. When you set the router up originally (if you can't remember bring it's web page up and look) did you have to use a login name and password to make the internet connection (PPPoE or similar) or was it just using DHCP?

The easiest way to find device manager is to right click on the Start Button and choose from that list. Google Translate says "enhetschef".

Goren

Enhetschef means department manager in a store or business. Most translators are based on pre IT vocabulary and are thus of no or little help. Once again. The Acer PC is not and never was connected to a router - it is directly hooked up the the internet provider´s optical cable via a network cable to the box in the hallway and then to the switch in the basement. It was working fine some 10 days ago and it has been inactive since then and when I turned it on the other day it refused to connect to the internet. I am using 3 ports in the box in the hallway - one for the incoming signal as marked, one for the Acer PC as marked and lit up when inserted and one for the router which serves the HP PCs and some other stuff. I need no identification or password to access the internet via the box in the hallway. I cannot see why the Acer PC would work if connected to the Router - we have just seen from the data I sent you that it neither connects to the internet via cable nor via wifi. I thought it had shown signs of connecting via wifi to the router, but now I realize I was wrong. I do not understand what the problem description "Your PC seems to be correctly configured but the unit or resource (DNS-server) does not respond" means. That was obviosly of no help to yourself.

billsey

Yeah, that's a generic message saying the IP addresses and such look fine, but when a DNS request is sent out there's no answer received. It's one of the earlier tests they do in their diagnostic sequence.

So, department manager and device manager are pretty close.

Does something like that show up when you right click on the Start Menu icon? In the American English version of Windows it's the sixth entry down from the top of that menu, between System and Network Connections. Network and Sharing Center is accessible from Network Connections. If you can verify that Device Manager doesn't show any errors and what the populated data is in the Details section of network properties.

Goren

Sorry for late answer but I have had to deal with a few issues on my new HP laptop which are now solved. HP has a support via What´s App in Ireland in addition to their peer to peer help. Today I started the Acer PC to try to sort out your last input. To my surprise it instantly connected to the internet via cable and started to update the virus protection software and Windows. My suspicion is that it had been in a Windows update mode when I had switched it off that affected the ethernet hardware. It started to update Windows 10 version 1803 with the frequent code for removal of malware - this one from June - and it continued with several of the same sort. It is now in the final stages of updating to version 1903. That update takes its fair time!. Do you have any idea what could have been the problem? Needless to say fault finding was not an issue today as the PC was working. I want to thank you for your patience and all your efforts to help with the detective work, language issues and all. Usually one learns something from every IT issue, but I am not sure if the lesson this time is: don´t switch off without checking if an update is in progress.

billsey

I think I still lean toward something your ISP was doing. Nice to know it's sorted, less nice to not know what it actually was.

Goren

My internet service provider cannot decide to leave 4 units running and disconnect the fifth. It is physically impossible - they are all connected to the same switch (the hallway box - I do not know its proper name in English) The cable from the switch to the ISP is just one line and that cable does not "know" which unit it is "talking" to. The 4 units are one PC, one laptop and two telephones. If the problem was with the ISP all units would have lost contact with the internet (that has happened 3 times in the past 15 years and I know how to deal with it) . Let´s close the case and once again thank you for taking time with the problem.

billsey

Typically what an ISP puts in for that function is a modem/router combo. The modem side converts the incoming signal to Ethernet (not needed if the incoming is already Ethernet) and the router side provides NAT (Network Address Translation) and DHCP/DNS (hands out an IP address unique to each connected device, and translates URL type addresses to an IP address that points to the server hosting the URL). It's not unusual for an ISP to limit the number of DHCP addresses allowed or to limit addresses to only the devices it recognizes as legitimate. If they screwed up a setting it could easily block your specific device from having access to the internet even though the Ethernet connection was up.

Goren

I am not an IT specialist but I know as much that the type of ISP internet connection you describe is provided by our phone companies and they provide a router to hook up all items to or access via wifi. You may refer to my hallway box as a router but I believe it is just a divider of the incoming signal so that one can hook up several items to it. It has no wifi. I have connected the Acer PC directly to that box and all my other stuff runs off a router I bought just to get a wifi signal in my apartment. That router is of course also connected to the hallway box. Thus I am convinced that the problem I had was related to hardware or software in the Acer PC, most likely software. I will check with my ISP to get a description of the system. They have offered a new type of box that can provide 1000/1000 Mbit/s (upstream/downstream) - right now I have 100/100 and I do not need more so I have declined their offer.

billsey

There are multiple types of routers. At the base they take a public signal and route it to your local devices. No need for wireless, though most modern consumer routers provide wireless as well. It's possible the box they are providing you is a switch, but they usually like more control that just an inexpensive switch will provide. If nothing else they want to be able to turn you off if needed...

Goren

I contacted my IPS. The box is a CPE Switch and they also call it CTS or anvaendarnod = user node. There is no limitation on the number of IP-addresses they provide for each user. That has been clear all the time as all units have worked when they were up and running all at the same time. I want you to have this information so that we can narrow down the problem to the Acer PC - hardware or software. If it appears again I will let you kow.

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