PLEASE SAVE MY NEW JOB!!!!

FrankJH

FrankJH

FrankJH

Soldato
Joined
6 Jun 2005
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22,598
Right before I start I want to stress that I dont believe I am breaking any rules with this thread, but sincere appologies if this is the case.

Right I have recently started a new job in the City for a small hedgefund (share dealers) in the IT department desktop / server support. Everything was going well for the first two weeks or so but then something happened yesterday..........

A stock market researcher came in complaining (nicely) that he had limited network availability, he was logged in to XP Pro but couldnt get internet or browse any local servers. Discovered that somehow overnight another machine had nabbed his IP, so i thought no problem " cmd & ipconfig/ release and then renew" however this only resulted in nothing changing ( ip add of 0.0.0.0)

so My next thought was ok, if I take him off the network and put him in a workgroup, and then re-add him that should assign him a new ip

Put in standard Netowrk admin username and password for the company, and that happily got him into the "workgroup" rebooted as required by windows and now cant log in at all ( no machine name / network name box on log in screen) normal user {who i believe IS a local admin} details, admin username and password all fail to get to the desktop ( password / username not accepted)

I have tried dameware and remote desktop connection and Computer Management snap in module - all of which deny that the machine name of this pc is reachable, even though first thing I physically checked and have at numerous intervals since, there is activity on the netowrk card.

Wont boot from usb key and tried booting to dos and using "PsPasswd" to rename Admin account but even though dos claimed this worked it had no affect.

Any ideas at all would be great - my colleagues have also run out of ideas and dont know of any other usernames or passwords that would have been used to install the OS other than the one I initally tried.

OK the thread title maybe a little dramatic lol, but I fel bad for not solving this.
 
Matt-Page said:
Have you tried logging in locally? Rather than to a domain or workgroup.

Is the network card onboard? If so, disable it in BIOS and put a PCI one in and see what happens. Start windows in safe mode to see if you can edit the local accounts there after loggin in locally.
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No one can log in locally - we have tried the day to day user details, the "normal" admin/ blank password, also the netowrk admin details but logging into workgroup (local machine) all to no avail

Netowrk card is onboard, i have been rummaging thru old pc's here but all seem to have onboard cards also - will keep looking just incase though.

All varieties of safe mode ask us to log in first - highly frustrating I have to admit, I always thought basic safe mode went straight to desktop but not in this case
 
What do you think to this plan?

If I find a similar style /model of pc from our unused pile and change over the hdd from the "locked out" unit, this should hopefully force an IP change so that I can actually see it on the network and hopefully remote in?
 
M0KUJ1N said:
OK, take a step back and think......you have a machine that cannot get a DHCP lease because someone has nabbed its IP address statically and you're wondering why remote admin tools aren't working? :)

The option of booting into safe mode sounds like a good idea, but wouldnt it be easier (for both you and the user) to get hold of the machines MAC address and re-register with a new IP on your DHCP server?

Also unplugging the network cable in safe mode wont make a difference either way, as the default safe mode doesnt actually load any network drivers.

Of course once you give the person a new IP address and they get it via DHCP you can have the fun task of hunting down the blighter who pinched it, though depending on your network setup you (i.e. your networking bods) can interrogate the routers, get the ARP history for that IP and even isolate the MAC address of the machine, when it was on the network and what socket it was plugged into! (although you can get some of this from your dhcp server directly)
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Just burning a Ultimate Boot Cd after a very hectic morning fire fighting.

Maybe I was wrong, but I was under the impression that taking the machine off the netowrk and onto a workgroup and then re-adding to netowrk did exactly as you suggest - reregistering MAC add on the DHCP ( sorry Otacon yur right , but I have done this in the past and its solved IP conflicts - but described it wrong in initial post)

Anyway just wrestled the ISO onto a blank cd and hoping this will work
 
I am being stupid - I thougth an ISO should be burnt straight to CD, I know Nero etc have "make bootable" option but how about using standard Windows XP's inbuilt burner?

The ISO wouldnt d/l from Planet Mirror so I grabbed the self extracting exe instead. Even after looking at extracted files from ISO (using WinImage) nothign aprticular looks bootable..... argggg got brain fade
 
Definitely not a group policy - I have logged into PCs locally a few times- so it was a good idea about policy's but not applicable

Its not logging on because no one knows the local admin username/password combo from when machine was built

AV software was fully upto date - its forced out by server on an auto update whenever there is a release

MOKUJIN - I am glad I wasnt going crazy and thinking that the ISO should be a direct burn, but this is exactly what I did within Windows own cd burner, and even after double checking BIOS is set to boot from CD first, My machine ( used as a test for the cd booting purposes) ignored the cd - the light went on so it was accessed, but then went on to hdd. CD is readable ( thru windows explorer)

the self extracting EXE>>>ISO is about same size ( 110mb) as the download which wasnt working earlier - so at least thats a step forward. What ever I do this ISO isnt seemingly bootable even though its a "good" burn

Quick update -- cd is being accessed , I get the dos cursor when its reading the cd ( instead of going straight to the XP loading screen) for about 10 seconds, and then it proceeeds to laod WinXP as normal
 
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No firewall active on pc - and no upgrade that could have potentially turned it on ( we have hardware firewalls in server room, so dont require any "windows" ones - and this even interferes with some apps we use anyway.

Unfortunately there was no other port to use, so that wasnt really an option.

I couldnt ping the DC ( dont know what a gc is, and guessing the gw is gateway?)

We came to the conclusion that the mobo inbuilt netowrk adaptor was failing for some reason ( it was a pretty ancient compaq EN machine)

My boss came in late with a bootable piece of software called "EFN" or something similar - will update on Monday when I copy it lol - but it was an XP shell basically with a "Locksmith" program available

The Admin account name had been changed to someone's name ( who had left the company yearsss ago) and no one on the IT team had even met or knew about the username / password - so first thing I did was change name to something more suitable

Still want to work out why XP wont burn a proper copy of the Ultimate Boot CD ISO, it literally just burns the ISO itself ( ie in explorer you see one ISO file rather than all the files it should contain)

Thank you everyone for all your assistance - not really sure why I deserved the remarks that have been edited out but hey ho
 
masterk said:
One thing to check first in the future, its always worth using your cable tester on the network cable, weird things can happen when a couple of pins are out on a 100mb network.
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Very true - just surprising it happened over night with no justification but your comment is taken onboard. Thank you
 
Mokujin - very true users can do silly things like that which they consider not important, fortunately (even though no one on here knew this) all cables are tidied away under desk etc, so i could immediately discount accidental cable damage like that. Also with constant network activity on the pc, I thought it fair to summise that the port ( both deskside and in server/ comms room) were working ok. Maybe this is wrong from your experience - please tell me if this is the case - but i thought it a fair bet.

LAughs - I have a BEng in electronics ( graduated in 98) and a big part of the course was networking - I cant agree more that "under the hood" is intensely boring !!! I am pretty good with anything deskside, ie if its anythign to do with the solitary pc, I can usually locate and fix the problem either hardware or software pretty quickly but I am the first to recognise my networking skills need a lot of work!!

Should have "Dont Panic" as my motto - I wouldnt normally care so much but being a brand new job and the guy coming in with the fault when I was the only one on duty made it my responsibility - when my colleagues couldnt sort it I was already feeling better but still wanted to solve the problem myself if I could.

As to finding you a job........... well not sure they would take my recommendation just yet lol three IT hardware guys in a company of 40 people in total, most would probably say it was IT heavy already!!!!

CrashUK

As stated above maybe my thoughts were wrong but surely if there was network activity (and not the sort or flaky intemitant kind ) this surely indicates both cable and ports are ok? Therefor had to be hardware failure of some kind, or a server causing problems with dhcp

thanks aj - I wonder why this has been left out ( iso native support) and no doubt it would be easily put in as an update if MS wanted to?

Yeah I think this might be something to do with it as some do bring in laptops in addition to their workstations

Thanks again everyone
 
Very true, the log should be read for future reference to see what happened.

Masterk - yeah if a pin is out of place then that could cause problems - but the pc and cable where completely in a stable situation, so I personally think this was stretching the possibility of this being the cause - with a freshly used cable then by all means for sure



Again thank you everyone - I certainly learned a few things so glad that i started this post - even if slightly embarassing lol
 
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