Virgin Media Technical Support - a Cautionary Tale, and a question

I have a friend who after many years as an NTL TV-and-broadband
customer just upgraded his Virgin Media broadband subscription,
to their new 10MB service. An engineer duly came and installed a
cable modem, apparently necessary for 10MB...

And then the problems started! To cut a very long story short, my
friend could access the broadband service on his wife's laptop
but not on his desktop PC (both running Win XP). No router
involved - he just swapped the cable over between the 2 machines
(a router comes later, when I go and set it up for him). The only
thing that VM's ex-NTL technical support drones in India could
suggest from reading their scripts was to 'delete the TCP/IP
stack as it was obviously faulty' (although this of course isn't
actually possible in Win XP, although you can 'repair' it using a
command line instruction). After 3 days of frustration he finally
managed to get through to someone at VM in the UK, who suggested
he install a new NIC in his PC as the one on his Asus motherboard
might have failed. He duly trotted down to PC World (I know!) and
spent £15 on a NIC and £30 on a new 15-metre Belkin Cat6 cable to
replace the Cat5e one that had been in service between set-top
box and PC since he originally signed up to NTL's half-megabit
service several years back. When he got home, he decided to swap
out the old cable from the modem to his PC, as the simplest
option not requiring that he open the case - and voila! he
instantly had a working connection on both desktop and laptop...

I guess there are several morals to this story:

Don't assume that just because a cable works with one PC it will
work with a different one. I would love to know the reason the
original cable suddenly only worked with the laptop but not with
the desktop machine, where it had worked with both the previous
day (yes, before the engineer's visit)

Never assume that a company's technical support staff always know
what they're talking about

Don't buy your parts from PC World!

Martin D. Pay
Not a cable broadband user - but who would be genuinely
interested if anyone can offer a sensible explanation for the
sudden anomaly in the behaviour of the original cable...


Martin D. Pay

"Martin D. Pay" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
>I have a friend who after many years as an NTL TV-and-broadband
> customer just upgraded his Virgin Media broadband subscription,
> to their new 10MB service. An engineer duly came and installed a
> cable modem, apparently necessary for 10MB...
>
> And then the problems started! To cut a very long story short, my
> friend could access the broadband service on his wife's laptop
> but not on his desktop PC (both running Win XP). No router
> involved - he just swapped the cable over between the 2 machines
> (a router comes later, when I go and set it up for him). The only
> thing that VM's ex-NTL technical support drones in India could
> suggest from reading their scripts was to 'delete the TCP/IP
> stack as it was obviously faulty' (although this of course isn't
> actually possible in Win XP, although you can 'repair' it using a
> command line instruction). After 3 days of frustration he finally
> managed to get through to someone at VM in the UK, who suggested
> he install a new NIC in his PC as the one on his Asus motherboard
> might have failed. He duly trotted down to PC World (I know!) and
> spent £15 on a NIC and £30 on a new 15-metre Belkin Cat6 cable to
> replace the Cat5e one that had been in service between set-top
> box and PC since he originally signed up to NTL's half-megabit
> service several years back. When he got home, he decided to swap
> out the old cable from the modem to his PC, as the simplest
> option not requiring that he open the case - and voila! he
> instantly had a working connection on both desktop and laptop...
>
> I guess there are several morals to this story:
>
> Don't assume that just because a cable works with one PC it will
> work with a different one. I would love to know the reason the
> original cable suddenly only worked with the laptop but not with
> the desktop machine, where it had worked with both the previous
> day (yes, before the engineer's visit)
>
> Never assume that a company's technical support staff always know
> what they're talking about
>
> Don't buy your parts from PC World!
>
> Martin D. Pay
> Not a cable broadband user - but who would be genuinely
> interested if anyone can offer a sensible explanation for the
> sudden anomaly in the behaviour of the original cable...

You do know that you need to reset the cable modem if you switch it to a
different PC?
This because they only supply one address and it knows it has allocated it
to one PC and won't work with the other.
If you power cycle the cable modem it forgets this allocation and allows the
other PC to work.

You will have to do this when you install the router.

"dennis@home" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:essmtt$i77$(E-Mail Removed)...
> You do know that you need to reset the cable modem if you switch it to a
> different PC?

Beat me to it :0)

After serious thinking Martin D. Pay wrote :
> and voila! he
> instantly had a working connection on both desktop and laptop...

I bet he doesn't.

On 2007-03-09, Martin D Pay <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
> and voila! he
> instantly had a working connection on both desktop and laptop...

I'm thinking he didn't actually try connecting the cable back to the
laptop afterward to see if that would still work.

If you want to change the equipment attached to your cable modem
you need to either wait until the network forgets about the MAC
address on the old box or, if you are in a hurry, change the MAC
address on the new box to match the old one. The network doesn't
want to see more than one MAC address at a time, or in quick
succession.

Dennis Ferguson

"Martin D. Pay" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> I have a friend who after many years as an NTL TV-and-broadband
> customer just upgraded his Virgin Media broadband subscription,
> to their new 10MB service. An engineer duly came and installed a
> cable modem, apparently necessary for 10MB...
>
> And then the problems started! To cut a very long story short, my
> friend could access the broadband service on his wife's laptop
> but not on his desktop PC (both running Win XP). No router
> involved - he just swapped the cable over between the 2 machines
> (a router comes later, when I go and set it up for him). The only
> thing that VM's ex-NTL technical support drones in India could
> suggest from reading their scripts was to 'delete the TCP/IP
> stack as it was obviously faulty' (although this of course isn't
> actually possible in Win XP, although you can 'repair' it using a
> command line instruction). After 3 days of frustration he finally
> managed to get through to someone at VM in the UK, who suggested
> he install a new NIC in his PC as the one on his Asus motherboard
> might have failed. He duly trotted down to PC World (I know!) and
> spent £15 on a NIC and £30 on a new 15-metre Belkin Cat6 cable to
> replace the Cat5e one that had been in service between set-top
> box and PC since he originally signed up to NTL's half-megabit
> service several years back.

so Pace STB originally? 10 Mbps half duplex only, and may not have been
Cat5.

When he got home, he decided to swap
> out the old cable from the modem to his PC, as the simplest
> option not requiring that he open the case - and voila! he
> instantly had a working connection on both desktop and laptop...

Did the new modem come with a new cable? (AFAIR my new Samsung STB was
different RJ-45 socket to the Pace, and the old cable wouldnt work).

There are several ways of wiring RJ-45 connectors, and a miswired cable
might marginally work with a port on 1 device, but not on another.

maybe 1 PC interface is "auto crossover" and the other isnt? (or he might
have 10/100/1000 ports which dont care for some). If so, replace the cable
with one crossed (or not) and both devices will work (but 1 at a time as
another poster mentioned).

and if he had had a modem - then there would have been enough ethernet ports
to try different combinations before getting all upset.....
>
> I guess there are several morals to this story:
>
> Don't assume that just because a cable works with one PC it will
> work with a different one. I would love to know the reason the
> original cable suddenly only worked with the laptop but not with
> the desktop machine, where it had worked with both the previous
> day (yes, before the engineer's visit)
>
> Never assume that a company's technical support staff always know
> what they're talking about
>
> Don't buy your parts from PC World!

i would suggest one - which is start from the basics, and check the
instructions before trying complicated fixes........
>
> Martin D. Pay
> Not a cable broadband user - but who would be genuinely
> interested if anyone can offer a sensible explanation for the
> sudden anomaly in the behaviour of the original cable...
--
Regards

(E-Mail Removed) - replace xyz with ntl

On Fri, 09 Mar 2007 17:30:56 -0600, in uk.telecom.broadband , Dennis
Ferguson <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>If you want to change the equipment attached to your cable modem
>you need to either wait until the network forgets about the MAC
>address on the old box or, if you are in a hurry, change the MAC
>address on the new box to match the old one. The network doesn't
>want to see more than one MAC address at a time, or in quick
>succession.

Incorrect on ntl. It can handle several MACs, but you need to power
the modem off between swapping cables.
--
Mark McIntyre

"Martin D. Pay" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
>I have a friend

OH NO - not another "A FRIEND" message!

> To cut a very long story short,

He forgot to tell you that he phoned again because he thought you were
talking rubbish - then followed instructions on registering his other
computer. That's why it suddenly worked. He probably doesn't want to make
you feel a bit of a fool, although he knows you bluffed your way through and
asked on here!

The only cautionary tale is not to trust someone who thinks they are an
expert but constantly asks for help on a newsgroup in order to bluff their
way through !

"Martin D. Pay" wrote:

> Don't assume that just because a cable works with one PC it will
> work with a different one.

Nonsense. You'll have the likes of PC World selling gold plated cables to make
ethernet go faster with that attitude.

Graham

"Eeyore" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
>
>
> "Martin D. Pay" wrote:
>
>> Don't assume that just because a cable works with one PC it will
>> work with a different one.
>
> Nonsense. You'll have the likes of PC World selling gold plated cables to
> make
> ethernet go faster with that attitude.
>
> Graham

They sell pc's running mac os x !
http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2007/03...macosx_on_pcs/ to go with
your go faster gold cable.

adam
>