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Can't connect to computers in your network?

Posted August 2002 by Steve Sinchak

On early versions of Windows you may find yourself with a PC that cannot connect to anything on the network. There are a lot of reasons why you may have networking issues, such as problems with TCP/IP or issues with your computer trying to authenticate to the network itself. In some situations, computers actually authenticate to access the network using a standard called IEEE 802.1X. When this is enabled, and you try to connect to a network that does not use this standard, you can experience issues. Follow these settings to ensure this is disabled on your PC:

  1. Click on the Start Button.

  2. Click My Network Places.

  3. Right-click and click on Properties.

  4. Right-click on Local Area Connection and click on Properties.

  5. Click on the Authentication tab.

  6. Uncheck Enable network access control using IEEE 802.1X.

  7. Click on OK.

Hopefully that should fix the problem. If it didn't then I suggest troubleshooting your TCP/IP stack to ensure your computer is getting an IP address via DHCP or has a valid static address configured.

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