A big #macexcuse if you ever needed one

While Senedi takes care of the software needed to run businesses effectively and manage operations efficiently, we realized that seamless integration with hardware can become a nightmare for many of our clients (and relatives). Thus, Komputeroda was born. We put together plans and packages that makes is so much easier for folks needing end-to-end technical support. Komputeroda also does a few other interesting things which we can talk about in another post.

Anyway. Yesterday, I spent an afternoon trying to work out a problem that is sometimes why people switch to Macs.

Two PCs running Microsoft WinXP behave differently on the same network while my Macbook connects to the said network without any problems. Wifi, wired, no issues. But the two PCs... The first, a desktop, would not connect to the wireless network. An inconfig /all command revealed a strange "Tunnel adapter Teredo Tunneling Pseudo-Interface" alongside the usual ethernet and IP address information. Wha-?! My sentiments exactly. The second, a laptop, would "connect" to the wireless network but it would say "Limited Connectivity" and the browsers would not load any pages. The ipconfig command revealed IP address that made it all seem kosher but the browsers wouldn't load anything. Okayyy.

A couple hours of trying the usual stuff, I called Jason Tay, Komputeroda's resident tech guru. I asked him just what the heck is this Tunnel adapter Teredo thing? He said tunnels are for when you need to get through a hill, and that in this context, it is bad. I should get rid of it. He tried to do remote assistance but that didn't work either because the machines were just being cranky and refused to play nicely.

A couple of hours of random solutions later, both machines miraculously connected to the wireless network. Even after I rebooted them, they still worked. The solutions? Oh, it's a bit like striking lottery. You never know which numbers, really. The desktop, as Jason said, didn't play well with the Tunnel thing. I got rid of it by uninstalling Microsoft TCP/IP. The laptop, however, was weirder. It had the Intel Proset software on it which I tried to use to manage the wireless networks. It simply would not cooperate, asking me to create a profile and then telling me that the profile already exists. So I did a repair on the software via Control Panel which I thought would make it behave but all it did was show me an error message that it cannot create a wireless network profile. So I gave up and switched back to using Windows to manage the wireless network. And then it worked. Can't help but feel that the machines were just toddlers trying to get my few hours of attention.

A big #macexcuse if you asked me.

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