Can connect to LANs but not WAN

[Flip81]

A guy brought me is Toshiba laptop (Vista) and he can connect to LANs but his card wouldn't pick up on the internet.  The card and drivers were working fine.  I even installed a Vista compatible wireless USB adapter and he still couldn't connect.  I diagnosed the connection every way i knew how including browser troubleshooting.  (internet tools etc.)  Everything looked good to go.  What could the problem be?

[Flip81]

I'm guessing next time I see him i should tell him to try winsockfix?

[viking]

What IP setttings did he had? What are your IP settings? He received a valid DNS IP? Like yours? Or he has manually configured IP settings?
Also, what physical address has his network card? ("ipconfig /all" -> run in command prompt)
Have you tried an alternative operating system (ubuntu, knoppix, something else) to see if it is a windows problem or a hardware problem?

[Flip81]

i'm not sure about his ip settings.  I don't have his comp anymore.  What should I look out for in the IP settings?  I don't know alot about networking.

[phoenix910]

The basics you need to look for are:
You need the laptops default gateway IP address to be the IP address of the router, and the subnet mask needs to be the same (generally 255.255.255.0 and configured by DHCP - thats the automatic IP address assigning system inbuilt into most modems). Check if you can access the modem via your web browser (i.e. http://192.168.0.1/). If you can't, then that's where your problem is (you aren't in the same IP range or subnet mask). If you can, then check that you are set to go through it, and that the modem itself can connect to the internet. If that's all fine, then download a small linux distribution, burn it to a CD (make sure the linux is a live bootable distribution), and then test if linux can use the net. If it can, then you have a software problem.

-Stephen