I honestly know eff-all about Windows 8, but assuming it's not going to be too far removed from Win 7: you should be able to check in the "networks and connections" tab to see if you have a working broadband connection. If you don't, a little X should be shown over a tiny computer in the right-hand side of the bottom of the screen. That would indicate a "broken" connection, ie the internet is not working. There would also be (in the networks tab) a picture of a PC, a house and a world, with a line going through to each. If there's an X over that then the internet conenciton is not functioning. You should be able to go into networks, select your connection and try to make it connect.

What cable was put in that is messing you up now? Was it put into your computer or into the apartment? It couldn't be something as stupid as one of your flatmates unplugged the broadband to plug in this cable, could it? :shycouch:

I'm talking about the manager of my boarding house connecting my computer to the modem via cable and he couldn't access the internet because there is something my computer is doing to block it. This has happened before where it's said the connection is limited and I've had to mess around and try and get it back to normal. I can't remember how to do it and it's driving me crazy.

Well we need to figure out whether you're connecting to an actual modem or a router. Ideally, you should have a router connected to the modem, then your computer connected to the router. This will allow more than one computer to utilize the single IP address that gets assigned to the modem from your ISP.
Routers will be able to use NAT, which lets multiple internal computers use private IP addresses to communicate over a single public, routable IP address.

The reason I bring that up is because if it really is a "modem", like a cable modem or what have you, and it doesn't have an integrated router, then only one PC can connect and actually have internet because there's no NAT.

So, that's something you have to confirm.

If it's a router, wireless or otherwise, and you were fine connecting wirelessly but now you can't connect with the wired connection, ask whether the router has MAC address filtering. If it does, this basically requires any device connected to it, wirelessly or not, to have their MAC address entered into the "allow" list. Since your wireless network card and your wired network card are two separate physical entities, and MAC addresses are physically dictated on the device and are unique, you will have a different MAC address for each. And if only your wireless network card's MAC address is allowed, then obviously your wired one won't be.

If this is the case, you will have to get whoever manages the router to add your wired network card's MAC address to the allowed list in the router. You can find this mac address by doing an IPCONFIG /ALL in a command prompt.

Just as an aside where would this MAC filtering be implemented? I just got a Netgear N300 router and have been trying to set up an IP phone which is connected to one of the ethernet ports. I don't think it would be MAC filtered as all other connections (1 wired, several wireless) get through without issues but just to eliminate the possibility would this be in my modem settings somewhere?

Assuming it's a managed router, which most are, you'd probably want to refer to the documentation to navigate to the configuration page and be able to enter the administrative credentials to access it.

Typically, router configuration pages can be accessed by typing in 192.168.1.1 in your browser's URL bar, but some have different gateway addresses, which will be noted in your documentation.
Also, usually the username will be "admin", and either have a blank password or a default password in the documentation or on a sticker physically located on the router.

Once you're in the config page, you should see something to the effect of access control or security, etc. Basically, you're looking for anywhere it allows you to put a MAC address in. Usually the default is to have MAC filtering disabled, so in order to enable it, you'll have to set it that way in the pertinent section. After enabling it, you will be required to enter the MAC addresses you wish to gain connectivity through the router. You will have to add the MAC address of every device that connects to it. PS3/Xbox, Laptops, phones, PCs, etc.
This is good if you want to make sure you control who uses your internet, assuming they can get through your passcode, assuming you have one implemented.

If you just want to make sure you're NOT filtering MAC addresses, you would just log in and ensure no MAC filtering is enabled, in the configuration as described above.

Pretty much any modern router will have MAC filtering, but I have never seen one with it enabled by default, since you would not be able to connect to it out of the box, which would make configuring it a bit hard...
But you would definitely want to check that someone has not gone in and enabled it after the fact.

Thanks. As far as I can tell this is under Wireless Card Access List in Netgear N300 config which is not enabled.

We are due to set up MAC addresses as part of a Gargoyle system but as far as I know it hasn't been set up yet. However, I will have to check this. It definitely is a router because more than one people are connected to it ~ 10 people. I've found my mac address before because we originally on this system. I'll see what I can find out about this and the webcam and get back to you when I'm next available. Thanks so much for your help hun. xxx

Can you clarify that? If you meant you put your MAC address on the router before, and it was your wireless one, then switching over to wired is definitely your issue. I don't know if that's what your sentence meant though.

Let us know if/when you resolve it.

is there a way to look inside a rar file/package without extracting the files?

Get Winrar.

WinRAR archiver, a powerful tool to process RAR and ZIP files