A continuing story ... ... ...

Abandoning, at least temporarily, the attempt to get anything useful from the router guys, I finally found a potentially free support entry at Microsoft. The invitation to submit a problem said "send us an email describing your problem and one of our friendly experts will phone you immediately with a solution."

Needless to say, it didn't work quite like that.

Instead of a phone call to give me a solution I got an email that recommended that I telephone the Network Support Group directly, as my problem was insoluble in the witch-water at the central support site.

A phone call a couple of days later - skipping over making them work on Xmas day - resulted in a FIVE-HOUR phone call during which I gave the "expert" control of my machine and watched as he made confused clicks and typed arcane incantations. At the end of the five hours he promised that he would send an email with a full description of what he had done and how I should proceed.

Unfortunately, he had left my computer on the edge of being inoperable. Even Word wouldn't open normally. The key change that he made was to open Windows "Services Management" console and disable all non-Microsoft services. I had no record of what specific command he'd used to get to that management console; but fortunately the Start|Run box has a drop-down that shows the last 5 commands entered. I was able to pick them up, and one of them worked. Re-enabling the "third party" services brought most of the machine back to life, although there still are a couple of things missing that will probably require individual program remove/reinstall to get back to good shape.

TWO DAYS LATER I received his email "with all the details" that said:

"We are happy that you called on Microsoft Support and we are glad that we solved all our problems. If you uninstall your Antivirus (which he spelled incorrectly) everything will be fine."

Despite having solved absolutely none of my former problems, and having created several new ones that I had to try to figure out how to back out of, on the remote possibility that his suggestion that "Your Firewall is blocking LAN networking" I initiated a "chat session" with Norton support today. The wait for an analyst was just barely an hour, but at least I didn't have to hold a phone up to my ear - just stare at a screen that wasn't doing anything.

The Norton expert once again took control of my desktop, did lots of clicks and typed incantations of which I have NO RECORD, but finally, about 3.5 hours into the chat session, he got into the Network Setup Wizard. I was able to follow what he did there, and at one point he made a selection that - according to all of Microsoft's most detailed instructions - was entirely illogical and inappropriate. It did, however, lead to another selection a couple of clicks later that did look pretty good, and apparently resulted in restoring the LAN connection for the machine he worked, showing connections to most of the expected other machines.

Now my remaining problem is to see if I can remember what he did there, so I can replicate that on the three other computers.

So the Norton guy pretty well proved that it was NOT the antivirus/firewall; but was an error in the Microsoft network setup that the Microsoft third-tier-up expert couldn'tdidn't find.

The Norton guy also made some changes to Norton "policies" on this machine, that may or may not have affected what was accomplished. Once again, I have no record of how he got into the places where the changes were made, but may be able to find my way in if I flounder around in there long enough - if I find that I need those changes on the other machines.

In anticipation of additional support calls, today I got myself a cheap speaker phone (couldn't find a headset phone), and as soon as it gets done with it's intial battery charging cycle I'll turn it on to see if it's suitable to minimize the "flat-ear syndrome" generated by my last call to Microsoft. Then I'll be ready to call ... ... (?).

I still can't ping the print server on my laser printer, but some progress probably was made today on the LAN setup otherwise. It appears that I may need to change the fixed IP address for the printer to get it back into the LAN, but I have to be able to connect to it to change it so I can connect to it. Catch 21.9 strikes again.

The router operates/assigns IPs in a different series than was used by the printer (the printer is in the default range for Microsoft Workgroups), and the router can't reassign the printer because it operates on a fixed address that can only be changed by editing its internal "web page." Hopefully, I can connect to a separate (off-LAN) computer to get in to get the printer's address into the "router compatible" range(?) - if I can decipher what the right range is from the minimalist router user manual.

And life goes on all around me ... ...

John