How old are the cables connected to your computer?

While at the office today, my main computer started having some serious issues with the Internet.  The first thing I did was check to see if the cable modem had stopped working.  All seemed in order, and a second computer in the office was having no problems.

My next thing to do was to test my speed connection by going to SpeedTest.net.  The slow computer was having a problem running the test, but the second computer wasn’t.

So at this point I knew the entirety of the office was online, but not my main computer.  I rebooted the computer and when it came back on it had no Internet at all.  I went to “Start” in Windows XP, clicked on “Control Panel” and then on “Network Connections”.  It showed my connection as being dead and a “Network Cable Unplugged” message.  Okay, so this narrowed down my hunt some.  I unplugged the cable from the bad computer, then took the cable from the working computer and plugged it in to the non-working one.

Presto, I was back on the Internet.

Luckily I always keep spare Ethernet cables laying around, so I took out the apparently dead one, plugged the other computer in to the same port on the switch to test the switch port with a new cable, and it worked.

Just another example of how panic inducing problems with computers often have simple solutions.  Always use a process of elimination to figure out the problem, and it is almost always the simpliest thing as it was in this case.  Just remember to stay calm, no matter how frustrating the situation is, and go step-by-step to eliminate possible causes of your problem.