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Brian DumasFlag for United States of America

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Win XP system can ping LAN but not WAN

Hello Experts. A friend of mine has an issue with one of his systems. His business has approximately 15 computers connected to the network which is also connected to the internet. All of his systems are Windows 7 or Windows 8. One of his machines runs Windows XP. He recently had Centurylink upgrade his internet speed. All of his systems are fine, except the Windows XP system. The windows XP system is connected via wireless. Most of the systems are cabled, but others are wireless too. On the 'bad' system, It says it is connected to the internet and has a good signal. But if he tries to open IE it crashes. When I got on his system, I tried to ping the local network. That was fine. When I tried to ping outside the network (8.8.4.4) it could not find it. I tried other IP's too, same result. We have rebooted the system and the modem. Can someone please suggest how to debug this and then how to fix it? Or I guess, just fixing it would be great.
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Scott C
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Well, as you know XP is beyond getting support updates so that system is extremely vulnerable.

You could have an infection.  Try running a MalwareBytes scan and a deep virus scan and see if anything turns up.

Is there a reason to keep this machine on XP and not upgrade to at least Windows 7?  That one machine can be putting the entire network at risk.

If XP is necessary, consider upgrading to Windows 7 then having a virtual machine running XP for any legacy software.
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Hello IT-Expert. I can ping the default gateway. What I meant about the other IP's is I tried 8.8.8.8 and 4.2.2.2. None of those would connect. Same thing happens if I put in www.amazon.com.

Hello ScottCha. I agree with the assessment about WinXP not being supported. I will pass on the suggestion about a Win XP VM.

Thanks, Brian
Hi Brian,

I agree with ScottCha's comments above.  Definitely something to think about.
Those two IP's that you've just given, what are they for?  I assume 8.8.4.4 is your external ISP IP address?
IE crashing could be a totally unrelated IE problem.  I don't use it personally.
Just out of curiouslty, you could try using a different browser if you can, and see if you can get to the router's configuration page.
Hello IT-Expert,

The IP addresses that I was ping are really irrelevant. I had looked up on the internet (from my system) for good IP addresses to ping to test a WAN connection.

I'll give a try with another internet browser, but I already can ping the modem.
Do You try to do so as suggested ScotChka. If you do not have an external FW must be some infection.

You can try "Complete Internet Repair" tool:

https://www.raymond.cc/blog/repair-xp-and-vista-internet-connection-problems-with-icr/
Have you scanned for virus/malware?  I have run into more than a few computers that were infected that were not able to get to the internet.
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Imybash

Can you please provide an IPconfig/all of the xp machine that is not working and one from a working machine. Can you check to see if you haven't set a manual IP address on the co machine and also double check your DNS addresses.
8.8.4.4 is Google DNS server and I can ping it fine with Windows XP from here.  I would first plug it in wired to eliminate the wireless as the problem.
Thanks everyone. It turned out that the system had a different gateway than the modem/router. It now works.