Been working as a systems/network administrator for a few months at a small-medium sized retail store chain. It's my first IT job so I'm still kinda green...

I have a pricing computer in a remote location that can't connect to the network (and therefore can't run inventory, etc.) I don't know the model, but I think all the computers in that location are Dell, and it's running Windows XP Pro and I think is 32 bit.

I can't ping it or access it at all. And they can't visit any webpages on it. Here's what I've tried...

• Had the girl I talked to try a different network cable.
• Had her ping different network places with no response.
• Changed DNS server settings to different IP's (primary: our main, secondary: a different store)
• Reset the Winsock thing (in command prompt: "netsh int ip reset reset.log" and then "netsh winsock reset catalog" and then reboot)
• Had her check the device settings to see if the network adapter is working properly... it is...

One thing which could very well be related, their domain controller is having hardware problems (i think) as of yesterday and is currently not working. None of the other computers there have had problems, except for one user couldn't log in (the "Windows cannot connect to the domain, either because the domain controller is down or otherwise unavailable" error) but I worked-arround that by making a local account for the user. No other problems.

Any other ideas I can try?

1. Make sure it's plugged in

2. Disable firewall/AV software for testing purposes only

3. ping 127.0.0.1 from the unreachable machine

4. ping the assigned address for the machine from itself

5. Have the unreachable machine ping* and/or access the gateway web/console interface (don't need to let them log in, just to make sure it's reachable).

6. Have them access an intranet website by IP address

7. Have them access an intranet website by hostname

8. Have them access an intranet website by FQDN

9. Have the machine drop into the nslookup command prompt. (open command prompt, type in 'nslookup'). run 'set debug' to enable debugging printout and then lookup a domain record. Compare results to nslookup of same domain record on a good computer on the same network.

10. Have them access an Internet website by IP address.

That'll help you determine where the problem is located.

*some gateways won't respond to ICMP (ping) requests, so visit a service running on it will solve the problem. Most will have a web interface or telnet/ssh server running.

Ping 8.8.8.8 in the command prompt, if you get a response, then use that as the IP address. The domain controller maybe blocking DNS on a machine that is not authorized on the network. Then again, can she even ping the default gateway for that office?