Reporting Problems
To report a problem please email us at resnet@solent.ac.uk or leave a message on our voicemail: 023 80319 587.
Our opening hours are 9am-5pm weekdays only.
Please tell us your name, the name of your Student Residence, your room number and as much detail as possible about the problem you’re having (including any error messages) and what you’ve checked already. Please give us a contact telephone number and, if possible, a contact e-mail address when calling.
N.B. we can only help with connecting your computer to our network, not software problems.
It would be very useful if you could check the items listed below - this will help us to help you find out what the problem is.
1. Do you need a driver for your network card?
If you need to find a driver for your network card then you can refer back to where you bought it or try and download one from the Internet using a friend's computer or using a computer in one of our Resource Centres.
Go to
http://www.google.co.uk/ and type in the model number of your network card and the words
driver download. There is a good chance that the manufacturer has provided a downloadable driver for users of their hardware.
2. Is the light on the back of the network card on?
Most network cards have two lights on them (one green, one amber) near to where you connect the patch lead from the wall socket and they indicate that the card is communicating with the network.
The green light should be lit all the time whilst your computer is switched on and the amber light should flash occasionally. If they are not doing this then it is likely that the network card is faulty or not fitted/configured correctly.
It could also be a problem with your patch lead connecting your computer to the wall socket in your bedroom. You can check your patch lead works by asking someone in your vicinity to replace their patch lead with yours, on their computer - and getting them to perform the above test. If their computer still works then ergo! the problem isn't the patch lead.
3. Can your computer talk to our network OK?
If the lights on your network adapter are working OK then try checking that your computer can talk to our network. This can be done as follows:
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Open a command (or MS-DOS) prompt. On a Windows 2000/2003/XP PC you can do this by clicking on the Start button, selecting Run, typing cmd and then clicking OK and, on an Apple Mac, OS X users can start the Terminal application.
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In the window that opens up, type ping 193.63.197.246 and then press the Return (or Enter) key.
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You should get a response like reply from 193.63.197.246 or 64 bytes from 193.63.197.246
If you got an error message then you can check your patch lead works by asking someone in your vicinity to replace their patch lead with yours, on their computer - and getting them to perform the above test. If their computer still works then ergo! the problem isn't the patch lead.
4. What is the Ethernet address of your card ?
If you are still having problems connecting to the network, one of the first checks that we will make is to see if your card is talking to Resnet at all. To do this we will need the MAC address of your network card. If you are reporting a problem, please make sure you include this address in your email.
5. Troubleshooting pages
Please work through the troubleshooting page to see if you can solve the problem.