Problems connecting to XP box

[zwiller]

Led is on and connects to a Win7 machine fine.  Bench/show PC is XP and previously used it for the entire conductor beta with no issues.  Now nada.  With regular and crossover cables, no mag jack lights.  Static IP, firewall off, wifi disabled, reflashed ETD firmware 3 times.  Thinking it's a LAN setting or my crossover cable went bad.  Any other suggestions?  THANKS!

[taybrynn]

I've only used regular cables before

[tbone321]

You need to check and see if something is blocking multi-cast or if multi-cast is being disabled.

[caretaker]

Sam,  since you said you already tried a cross-over cable (will assume the cables are fine) The next plave to look is if the XP box is putting out Multicast.  First open a command window on your XP box and type ipconfig /all and press enter. It your XP box is hooked to your network OR you have a static IP address assinged it will return that information. Next, If you don't have it download a program called wireshark You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login  and install it on the XP machine. It is not a hard program to use and it will show you what packets are being sent out and returned to the machine. (Run it while sending data to the ETD.

[zwiller]

Thanks guys.  From my completely novice use of wireshark it does appear that I am sending unicast.  How do I enable multicast?  Tried googling and I got lost...  I should tell you guys I am running XP PRO.  That appears to be a good thing... 

[caretaker]

Hi Sam,  OK what program are you using to send data to your ETD? (xLights, Vixen, etc...)  That is what should be sending out the Multicast from your XP box.  Before we go any further let's make sure this is set up correctly.

[tbone321]

Also, did you install any new anti-virus or firewall software. Some of these can alter the protocol stack and effectivly block the sending of multi-cast packets as very few personal PC's ever really need to do that.

[zwiller]

ipconfig returns the address I used to setup the LAN.  So that is good. 

Didn't had any programs running along side of wireshark.  Will try xlights which is my testing platform.  No new firewall or AV. 

My setup is direct PC to ETD, no router/switch.  If I just plug ETD into win7 I get the mag jack lights.  I suppose I am expecting the same response from the win XP box even without having a lighting program running. 

[rmp2917]

The lights on the MagJack should light as soon as you plug in the cable even if no software is running.

Since you say that the ETD works with your Win7 machine, I would guess the problem is with your Ethernet connection.

Have you tried the crossover cable on the Win7 machine? If it works, the cable probably isn't the problem.

Check your adapters settings. I use automatic configuration for the IP address and I am able to connect to the ETD just fine on Win7 using xlights.

[zwiller]

From memory the crossover cable does work on the Win 7 machine, but will double check.  The win7 machine does not require any config setting and does it automatically but the XP box always needed a static IP.  Tried auto and no dice.  Also, the ethernet lights on the XP box light up so it appears to be ok.   

There are a ton of other things withing the advanced TC/IP settings, are there any other settings I need to be concerned with? 

[taybrynn]

You might not have all the protocols installed on XP ... I'm still wondering about your cables and not sure why you'd ever want to use a crossover cable.  Cheap cables have been a major problem for me in the past.  Anything from a dollar store = pure junk.  When you splice into a cheap cat5 cable, there are just a few strands of baby copper at most, no wonder there is no/lousy signal.  The cat5 from monoprice is what I use, per the wiki.

[tbone321]

Some network adapters are unable to auto negotiate and alter the send receive pairs and in this case, a crossover cable will be needed.  As for the situation here, the network card may be the issue.  It could be failing and no longer able to negotiate the correct pins and speed.  One thing to try is to connect the ETD to a switch and see if the magijack lights up then.  If so, then the issue is probably with the XP machines network card.  You can then plug the XP machine into another port of the same switch and see if you can control the ETD with it.  If so, then the switch is performing the negotiation that the XP network card is no longer doing.  You can also look at the driver settings to see if they are locking the card at a specific rate or mode but that doesn't normally change by itself.

[caretaker]

Ok Sam yes you will need to run xLights (outputing data) THEN start a capture of packets with Wireshark.  My guess is you will see the mulitcast packets being sent out.  If you have a spare network switch or hub lying around try pluging your XP box into the switch/hub and plugging the ETD into the switch/hub (don't use crossover cables) and see if the MAGjack lights come to life.  I know when I was using a XP machine to run my show and was first trying to get the ETD to work for me I ended up using a old router I had to get the XP machine to connect to the ETD. 

[caretaker]

I have attached a screen capture of Wireshark with my computer sending out multicast (via xLights) for reference.

[zwiller]

Sorry for not responding.  Too much work and life in the way.  Will check out soon.  THANKS