Cannot find server or DNS Error

[robert4288]

what does this mean?

when im happily surfing the net or on messenger or something suddenly my internet seems to crash citing the phrase

'Cannot find server or DNS Error'

what does this mean because when my laptop seems to stop working my computer still does as i have the internet going through a wireless router. i dont understand why this is happening and its really annoying.

any help or suggestions would be gratefully received

[vehelpfulguy]

DNS stands for Domain Name Server, and it means that you have lost the connection to the network.

It seems to me your connection to your ISP is dropping for some reason.   

[quickthinker]

vehelpfulguy may be right,

however I dont think that the line is dropping as your other PC works OK, I assume your laptop is the wireless one. I think that either your wireless connection is going out of range, or there is interference ( got any cordless phones ?), or your laptop is using the router as DNS resolver and your PC is using the ISP DNS as a resolver.

It could be an number of things.

If you click Start, Run,

type cmd

type IPCONFIG /ALL

Do tis on the laptop and the PC and the only thing that should differ is the IP address, If not report back what the differences are.

[MargeB]

sorry, this may be a nasty one. Has happened to me a lot in the past, and is sometimes hard to resolve.

You need to check for spyware/virii first of all. Have you added/removed any 'PC health' type programs? Turned out to be the cause for me.

Reinstalling Internet Explorer/Windows may be the quickest option.

[OBonio]

Could also be that your ISP has flaky DNS servers.... I had this with Virgin. It's hard to tell what is causing it without knowing what you are doing unfortunately. Have a look at tracert, ping, ipconfig. First , try ping your router, then try and ping your DNS server, then try and ping google. This'll give you a hint as to where the problem lies.

[MargeB]

yeah. you can ping yourself. go to command and type ping 127.0.0.1 You should have some kind of connection there. If not, its not an ISP problem. Good answer obonio.

[quickthinker]

MargeB, If you ping 127.0.0.1 (loopback) this only indicates that the winsock stack is loaded, It doesnt necessarily mean that the connection works.

The best way is START - RUN - CMD - tracert 207.46.199.30

(Microsofts AKA DNS)

If it gets past the first 2-3 hops then your connection is OK

If fails at first hop then its not getting to the router

If it fails at the 2nd hop then its not getting past the ISP Gateway.

Just follow it down the line.

[robert4288]

thanks all who helped

to quickthinker

there are a few differences

in obviously the ip address, the physical address

anda also there is something on the pc 1 below the subnet mask named again ip address for which it says fe80::2c049ff:feef:1ffd%4

and also below the dns servers part but has no name, it has three nearly the same items saying the following fec0:0:0:ffff::1x1

fec0:0:0:ffff::2x1

fec0:0:0:ffff::3x1

and the last thing is the lease obtained and expires but that was to be expected

though just to let you know if this makes any difference neither my laptop nor my pc are physically attached to the router there both connected wirelessly

thanks for you help everybody, rob