What's an "internet cable"?

[BornToFolk]

Right, I feel a right muppet for asking this, but what does an "internet cable" look like?

My laptop is refusing to connect to the internet. I phoned Virgin Media last night and was told that I needed an internet cable to connect laptop to router so they could send a signal to fix it. I think that's what they said anyway...but it was very insistent that I needed an internet cable before they could do anything.

I'm going to go and get one at lunchtime but want to be sure that I get the right thing as I spent about an hour on the phone to Virgin last night and didn't get anywhere due to lack of cable. Can some nice geeky person please tell me what to look for and where I might find such a thing? I have lots of high street shops at my disposal...

Do they mean an ethernet cable?

It can connect the router straight to the laptop; check your laptop has a port on the side that can accept an ethernet cable and the router should have the same.

I think they mean an Ethernet cable. Strange way for someone who is supposed to know what they're talking about to phrase it. An Ethernet cable also known as a CAT 5 cable is what you require.

It will connect the router to your laptop rather than using wireless.

thanks Sidge. Not sure. He said it would be yellow or blue and should cost about £2 so credited my account with £6 so I could buy one

Ethernet cable - most usually yellow, but can be other colours. You need to connect it to the socket in your laptop and the equivalent socket in the router (probably up to 4 on the router). The photo linked earlier is the right thing. The connector is called an RJ45 connector - you can ask specifically for that.

Any computer shop should have loads of them. Check you haven't got one somewhere when you got the router.

Thanks throckenholt!

JollyHockeyStick, he really didn't sound like he knew what he was talking about. It really was the blind leading the blind...I hope I get someone a bit more clued up tonight!

I got sent an ethernet cable with my laptop too. Its handy when broadband is slow or my router needs its settings changing.

Oh, I probably do have one kicking about the house somewhere but exP has probably stashed it somewhere and tbh, it's going to be easier and quicker to buy a new one than try and find it...

here - have you tried working through it yourself ? Might save you some time or expense.

Likely problems :

1. The router is no longer connected to the network - have you tried rebooting it ?
2. You should be able to log into the router through a browser - usually something like 192.168.0.1 - although is probably the wired bit, so maybe try other addresses eg 192.168.0.2 etc, or 192.168.1.0 - work up through numbers - probably unlikely to be more than .10 at the end.

Once connected you may need a password to log in to it. You should then be able to see what is connected, and what it thinks the ip address is.

Is your laptop windows. linux or mac ? If windows, go to start and type cmd in the bottom search window, in the new black window that comes up type
ipconfig /all - that will show you what connections you have.
you can also type ipconfig /renew (but a reboot would do that and if you still have the problem after rebooting then something more is wrong).

Anyway - have a play and see how you get on - and try googling :)

I have never had a yellow ethernet cable! Mine are usually dull grey/black although I think I have a blue one somewhere.

You're a star throckenholt, thanks!

It's weird, as it seems there is a connection to the network but it can't connect to the internet. Sorry, am at work at the moment so I can't remember the exact error messages I was getting last night.

I tried rebooting the router several times but nothing doing.

I'll print out some of those articles and take home. The main problem of having no internet connection is you can't Google how to put it right!

Ah - I assumed since you can mn you could google too !

If it is connecting to the router but not the internet then the router is the issue. You probably do need to connect to the router with the ethernet cable, because the wireless bit of the router is secondary to the modem bit, and you need to be able to see what the internet connection through the modem is doing.

I have a netgear router and sometimes it drops the connection to the net and needs manually restarting (ie connecting with ethernet cable (make sure you can physically get the laptop close enough to the router - mine is on a shelf in a cupboard so not easy to get to !), using the browser to connect to probably 192.168.0.1, and probably clicking the reboot option - not sure what options your virgin one will have (I think they put a front bit in blocking you from seeing all the gubbins going on in the normal router page)).

Hopefully you will get it sorted soon.

Ok, I'm with Virgin and I have had it where the computer connects to the network but the network can't connect to the internet.. They did have to send signals down the line to check it and decided on the basis of that to send an engineer it. It was something to do with noise and a loose connection ad was fixed in about 5 minutes.

Is yours a cable service? If you have TV too, is there a flashing light on your TV box and/or you can't get their "on demand" service, then it probably isn't the router or the modem but a connection issue (IIRC - I was distracted by the fact that the engineer was about 12 [old gimmer])

Got one! I hope...it was from the 99p shop, called a "RJ45 Plug to Plug" cable. Looks very much like the one that Sidge originally linked to. Sound right?

Sounds right :)

ARGHHH! Right, well it appears that the ethernet cable was a complete red herring. The person I spoke to today said it was because of my McAfee anti virus software, preventing connection with the internet. I need to phone McAfee apparently but the number she gave me doesn't work and when I go to the McAfee website (currently on laptop in "safe" mode so can get on internet which apparently proves that it's the anti virus software..) there's no number listed under telephone support and anyway their phone line is only open 9-6!

So am currently downloading the Virtual Technician in the hope that that will fix it... In the meantime, does anyone have any experience of this?

McAfee's a bit crap, so I can well believe it. Boot your laptop up in normal mode and turn of McAfee. It will give you a number of dire warnings that awful things will happen, possibly the world may end, and you really shouldn't do that. Ignore it, turn it off, then try connecting to the internet. If that fixes it, it's your antivirus. If that doesn't fix it, it could still be your antivirus but more digging is required.

Virtual Technician found 7 errors and fixed them...still not working!

Right, will do as you suggest Naoko, thanks!

I'm back! Uninstalled McAfee and it seemed to do the trick. I feel v unprotected though - has anyone got any recommendations for free anti virus software?

I use the microsoft security essentials anti virus thing - seems ok

here

Virgn Media offers free security software, I use it and seems adequate.

Avast (free version) or Microsoft Security Essentials.

or free version of AVG may be worth a try
free.avg.com/ or free.grisoft.com/

You have to choose the free version else they try to get you to install trial version of their chargeable package.

(Then again, quite a number of software packages try to install their own toolbar for the web browser, or similar add-on, unless you decline!)

Glad OP found a budget cable (Poundland do similar) as Maplins and others will often charge 5 to 15 quid.

Yes, grey is common, but the ones I've seen in Poundland etc are mostly blue (presumably they consider them more pleasing on the eye), but you can get almost any colour if you look on Ebay or network supply firms.

I've gone for the free 30 day trial of the full version of AVG, in the hope that McAfee willl resolve whatever issues they've got going on during that time and I can just re-install as I had paid for it! I didn't give any credit card details to AVG so hopefully should be able to cancel or transfer to the free version after 30 days.

I used the AVG free version for years - it was fine. But the more recent one I found was very greedy on memory, and made other things run slowly. That was why I switched to Microsoft Security Essentials, which seems fine.

I hope you get some satisfaction out of McAfee - or a refund :)

Have had problems with internet connection all week, due to macafee. If you look on the forum on macafee's own website you will see this is an ongoing issue and has been for the last year.

Most people with Macafee got hooked into them by buying a Dell computer as they all come pre installed with this rubbish.

Macafee have issued various workarounds but have a look around the tech forums and you will see non of them work.

Macafee users world wide are raging, not so much about the problem, as there are issues in most things in life, but at Macafee's silence and lack of regard for their customers.

Just uninstall and use another product, you will save yourself many man hours of useless twiddling. The workarounds are just a fob off as they have not yet got a solution to the problem.