When attempting to launch ipconfig, the dialogue window automatically hides itself?

Arch

This may be esoteric but here goes- Lately I have been having problems maintaining a connection through wireless networks on my netbook. Out of frustration at one point I attempted to launch the ipconfig to see if I could puzzle out what was going on, but apparently whenever I pulled it up it just closed itself.

I am working on an MSi Wind netbook running windows XP service pack 3. I scanned with both Panda antivirus and malwarebites for potential viruses, but nothing came up.

The question I guess is, why doesn't the dialogue box stay open, and is this being enforced by my internet supplier or the campus internet to prevent me from constantly renewing my IP address manually?

thanks in advance

bwanie

how do you launch it?

have you tried running ipconfig from a pre-opened dos command prompt?

edit: i just tried it on vista and it's the same.

don't run it from the "run" prompt in your start menu. type cmd in there instead and run ipconfig in the dos box that opens up.

Arch

bwanie wrote:

how do you launch it?

have you tried running ipconfig from a pre-opened dos command prompt?

edit: i just tried it on vista and it's the same.

don't run it from the "run" prompt in your start menu. type cmd in there instead and run ipconfig in the dos box that opens up.

oh god I feel so stupid

Thanks

Arch

Although, as a corollary- how do I know if it is my wireless card that is on the fritz or if it is my campus wifi constantly disconnecting me every hour or so?

Jimmy King

You were probably thinking of the old winipcfg that opened a proper little windows app when trying to run it from the "run" prompt. I do that every couple of months.

CptHamilton

Arch wrote:

Although, as a corollary- how do I know if it is my wireless card that is on the fritz or if it is my campus wifi constantly disconnecting me every hour or so?

Well, the easiest way is to test one of the points of failure with a known-good alterantive. If you have a friend who can stay on the network for more than an hour at a time then it's probably your machine. If that's not available, find yourself a Starbucks or similar and park in a chair for a couple of hours.

What exactly happens when you go offline? Are you just not able to communicate with the internet, or does the connection signal strength drop to zero, or does the network vanish from the list of available ones? You might check your event log after you get booted to see if there are any indicative messages.

Arch

CptHamilton wrote:

Arch wrote:

Although, as a corollary- how do I know if it is my wireless card that is on the fritz or if it is my campus wifi constantly disconnecting me every hour or so?

Well, the easiest way is to test one of the points of failure with a known-good alterantive. If you have a friend who can stay on the network for more than an hour at a time then it's probably your machine. If that's not available, find yourself a Starbucks or similar and park in a chair for a couple of hours.

What exactly happens when you go offline? Are you just not able to communicate with the internet, or does the connection signal strength drop to zero, or does the network vanish from the list of available ones? You might check your event log after you get booted to see if there are any indicative messages.

These two things happen, and the second one is what makes me worry

L Ron Howard

I had a laptop with a decent wireless card for a while when I was in school. However, in order to connect to the wireless network, I had to download and install a new piece of software which came with new drivers that completely screwed the wireless card up. When I used the drivers that came pre-installed with WinXP, it worked flawlessly. The new software and drivers couldn't stay connected to jack shit for very long.
With that in mind, have you done any changes to your drivers or wireless software, like installed new ones, like I did?
Has it ever worked reliably, or is this something that has just suddenly happened?
About how old is your computer?
It might be that the wireless antenna has come loose, and might just need to be reattached. It could also be that the wireless card is dying. I assume that the card is built in, and not one you've bought separately..?

EclecticGroove

if you want to run it form the run command do the following:

cmd /k ipconfig
You can do the same with tracert, ipconfig/all, etc. It will open the command prompt window and tell it to not close once the action has completed.

CptHamilton

Arch wrote:

CptHamilton wrote:

Arch wrote:

Although, as a corollary- how do I know if it is my wireless card that is on the fritz or if it is my campus wifi constantly disconnecting me every hour or so?

Well, the easiest way is to test one of the points of failure with a known-good alterantive. If you have a friend who can stay on the network for more than an hour at a time then it's probably your machine. If that's not available, find yourself a Starbucks or similar and park in a chair for a couple of hours.

What exactly happens when you go offline? Are you just not able to communicate with the internet, or does the connection signal strength drop to zero, or does the network vanish from the list of available ones? You might check your event log after you get booted to see if there are any indicative messages.

These two things happen, and the second one is what makes me worry

If the signal degrades below the minimum tolerence of the NIC then it won't show up in the list anymore. Since it doesn't just randomly vanish or stop responding usefully without vanishing it's probably not a software issue. I say probably because, honestly, I've seen bad drivers do weirder things. If you have a friend with a laptop or a USB wireless adapter that you can test in the location where you normally use the wifi network then you can see if it's just some kind of interference issue. If this is a laptop, I still recommend connecting to some other free wifi source and seeing if it still happens. If neither of those are options at the moment, go download the latest drivers from your hardware manufactuerer, then uninstall the device from the device manager and reinstall via the downloaded drivers (you can try just installing the new ones, but often times it's safer to clear out what was there previously) to see if that improves performance.