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I am becoming increasingly frustrated with Vista. All of the things I know how to do on XP do not apply to Vista when it comes to under the hood stuff and information is scarce.

Due to recent power issues cause by a snow storm, my modem died. So, we're now left with mooching off our neighbors. (Yes, they know. They've left their network open for us to use and we do the same for them.)

So, I'm trying to connect my desktop through her laptop, which has the wireless adapter. Now, the Internet on my machine works intermittently but works constantly on her laptop. (This is with the wired and wireless bridged.)

The only thing I can think of is promiscuous mode not being set on the wireless. I'd like to know how I figure that out. I know how to do it on XP, but it doesn't seem to work on Vista.

So, how do i enable/confirm that promiscuous mode has been set?

Promiscuous mode has nothing to do with your problem. I'd investigate link quality, or elaborate on failure conditions.

Bridging under Windows is probably not the best way to do this. If it does not work with ICS, I suggest using a separate hardware WiFi to ethernet bridge.

http://www.google.com/products?hl=en&q= ... anostation

Enable promiscuity - wear some sexy lingerie
Disable promiscuity - wear something flannel



Sorry, I couldn't resist.

Back on topic - I agree with Contingency, I think your problem is more with the quality of your link to the laptop.

Until I noticed that this thread was in the 'Networking' forum, I was thinking "There's a promiscuous mode in Vista? Doesn't it pick up enough infections already?!?"

Promiscuous mode in networking is really just about when you're doing packet capture, whether the software should display all packets the NIC sees, as opposed to the ones meant for your machine to receive. Your NIC has to listen to everything and discard what isn't explicitly meant for your machine to receive.

Promiscuous mode is great if you want to snoop on your neighbors to see what websites they are accessing. Aside from that, it is not good for much.

Provided a switch isn't in use.

I tried looking for Internet Connection Sharing and came up with nothing on this Vista laptop. The closest thing I found was through the wizard and that required a wireless ad-hoc network. Seriously, that was the only option that came close.

Okay, here's the thing. I think promiscuous mode is the answer I'm looking for. And this is why:

A long, long time ago in a house far, far away I had my Linux server and my XP workstation. The Linux server has a wired NIC only. The workstation had an on board wired NIC and a discrete wireless NIC. In order for the Linux server to access the Internet through the wireless network, I used a crossover cable to connect the Linux server to the XP workstation. I bridged the wired NIC and the wireless NIC on the XP machine. The final step, however, was to place the wireless NIC in promiscuous mode otherwise the Linux server wouldn't get anything from the Internet.

You cannot tell me that I was mistaken or wrong. The truth is that promiscuous mode was the secret to getting the bridge to work properly. The proof being that the Linux server was unable to access the Internet until I forced the wireless into promiscuous mode.

Now, as for the condition of my link: it's quite possible. I just did a test between my desktop and my server, which were both running Linux at this point. Like so:

ifconfig eth0 pointopoint 192.168.1.* (Where * is the actual IP address the link is taking place.) Using my short Ethernet cables and a switch, 1% packet loss. I'm going to chalk up the packet loss to figuring out where it's supposed to go because after the first second or so it's 0% loss for a period of 10 minutes.)

Using the long Ethernet cable, I have 80+% packet loss. So, the problem may lie in the cable. So many things going wrong because of random power loss.

Still, I'd like to know how to enable promiscuous mode on Vista because my searches have turned up nothing.It is very frustrating for me, so I'm sure several others are frustrated as well. Let's give them a hand.

And here is my proof now:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/302348

I've followed the commands, but I get this as a response when trying to force promiscuous mode:
The requested operation requires elevation.

I'm using the known good Ethernet cable and I'm still having trouble.

Figured that one out. "Run as administrator"

And still having trouble.

titan wrote:

I tried looking for Internet Connection Sharing and came up with nothing on this Vista laptop.

You might want to try clicking on "help and support" in the start menu and searching for "Internet Connection Sharing".

titan wrote:

Okay, here's the thing. I think promiscuous mode is the answer I'm looking for. And this is why:

A long, long time ago in a house far, far away I had my Linux server and my XP workstation. The Linux server has a wired NIC only. The workstation had an on board wired NIC and a discrete wireless NIC. In order for the Linux server to access the Internet through the wireless network, I used a crossover cable to connect the Linux server to the XP workstation. I bridged the wired NIC and the wireless NIC on the XP machine. The final step, however, was to place the wireless NIC in promiscuous mode otherwise the Linux server wouldn't get anything from the Internet.

You cannot tell me that I was mistaken or wrong. The truth is that promiscuous mode was the secret to getting the bridge to work properly. The proof being that the Linux server was unable to access the Internet until I forced the wireless into promiscuous mode.

The problem here is that you're stuck on a solution that, in that specific case, worked, but isn't necessarily the best way to go. Now you're trying to generalize that combination as the only solution to your problem, when that isn't the case.

titan wrote:

Now, as for the condition of my link: it's quite possible. I just did a test between my desktop and my server, which were both running Linux at this point. Like so:

ifconfig eth0 pointopoint 192.168.1.* (Where * is the actual IP address the link is taking place.) Using my short Ethernet cables and a switch, 1% packet loss. I'm going to chalk up the packet loss to figuring out where it's supposed to go because after the first second or so it's 0% loss for a period of 10 minutes.)

Using the long Ethernet cable, I have 80+% packet loss. So, the problem may lie in the cable. So many things going wrong because of random power loss.

Still, I'd like to know how to enable promiscuous mode on Vista because my searches have turned up nothing.It is very frustrating for me, so I'm sure several others are frustrated as well. Let's give them a hand.

I think you're better-served doing things the right way that trying to duplicate a previous hackjob. It'd probably help to use cables that work, too. Your driver may or may not even support promiscuous mode. Rather than trying to bridge the connection, try ICS, some other NAT-based solution, etc.

Is it really not viable just to hook a USB wireless adapter to your desktop?

Is it a hack job if the option is in the right click menu by default?

Anyway, I've tried ICS, and it still doesn't work. I've tried both connecting the computers directly to one another and through the switch.

mikeymike wrote:

Is it really not viable just to hook a USB wireless adapter to your desktop?

Nope. Because the Radio Shack isn't open on Sunday and closed at noon yesterday. I really don't feel like driving an hour to get to the nearest Best Buy or Wal-Mart to pick up a piece of hardware I'm only going to need for a few days.

Here's the funny bit: The laptop can see my desktop, but can't access the folder I've shared. When I have it diagnose the problem, the laptop says the desktop didn't respond to the ping.

Alright, so I've found the real problem. The NIC on board is broken in the desktop.

I've come to this conclusion because I used the very same cable in connecting directly the laptop and the desktop to my Netgear router. The laptop grabs an IP address immediately and I can open the router page right away. The desktop, however, doesn't grab an IP right away, not at all, in fact.

This has been the trickiest troubleshooting experience I've had yet.

This is crazy because my router and modem, which I've discovered both work just fine, were not on a surge protector. My computer and server and switch are on a surge protector. The NIC in the server works just fine. Everything on the switch works just fine. Everything in the network works just fine, the way they're supposed to. But the NIC on my desktop has failed. Crazy. Absolutely crazy.

titan wrote:

Using the long Ethernet cable, I have 80+% packet loss.

Ouch! Bin that cable, it's garbage. It may just need the ends remaking, but if you don't have the tools to do it, bin it.

notfred wrote:

titan wrote:

Using the long Ethernet cable, I have 80+% packet loss.

Ouch! Bin that cable, it's garbage. It may just need the ends remaking, but if you don't have the tools to do it, bin it.

I've actually narrowed it down to a bad NIC now. See my previous post. I'm going to check the long cable with the laptop soon just to be sure, but the gf is demanding her laptop back now. Grr, sharing computers suck.

"Now, the Internet on my machine works intermittently"
That's the tell that it's not promiscuous mode.

Your latest problem may be explained by a configuration issue. Give the desktop a static IP (in the router's subnet) and attempt to ping the netgear router. If it doesn't work, disable ICS/the bridge and try again. If you have wireshark installed, use it to verify packets are being routed out the correct interface. Keep in mind that if the wired/wireless NICs subnets overlap, you're going to have difficulty troubleshooting.

mattsteg wrote:

The problem here is that you're stuck on a solution that, in that specific case, worked, but isn't necessarily the best way to go. Now you're trying to generalize that combination as the only solution to your problem, when that isn't the case.

The difference between a good troubleshooter and a so-so one is not the ability to identify potential causes, but rather the ability to rule them out. Given sufficient persistence, the desired result will be obtained--at the cost of much unnecessary effort. I think it's a worse approach than fiddling with it. A successful fiddler will acknowledge that he/she doesn't know what they did to make it work, but will try to reproduce the tweaks (both good and bad) in future configurations, while a bad troubleshooter will latch onto the final fix, ignoring the numerous "non-fixes" that nudged the config into something workable.

IMO if you took off that coloured glass bias against Vista in the first place, you might not be led down the wrong path from the beginning and reached the conclusion sooner.

That said, I have a few things to say:
- Promiscuous mode is not strictly for sniffing. The wikipedia page did mention most bridging are done through this mode, either NIC bridging in Windows or "bridged mode" in virtualization systems.
- Vista has been out for quite a while, the "info" should be there. Much of those "under the hood" stuff, especially things like netsh, are actually the same (may be more parameters) as XP. The only trick is probably to run them from a Command Prompt started from Admin mode.
- The "can't ping the other machine" problem may be due to Windows Firewall's default setting. You may need to set an exception to allow ICMP ping packets through. Vista IIRC was a bit more complicated, but in Win7 the ICMP ping has been grouped under File and Printer sharing so it's a bit easier there. Kind of a classic problem but the bad NIC may have something to do with this in this case.
- Time to move on blaiming Vista. If you want something to bitch, do it against Windows 7 instead.

Contingency: The intermittent connection made me think that it might be a problem with promiscuity because it seemed to drop out whenever the GF was accessing something. I know now that was just a random coincidence. Also, I was trying to rule out a potential cause for intermittent connection, but no one wanted to help me with this particular step. I also made the leap to test the NIC by connecting my workstation and the server directly to one another. Eventually, after an hour or so I identified that the NIC was broken and had nothing to do with software. But, instead of arriving at this resolution sooner, it was delayed because my first question was never answered and I was left floundering looking for an answer with no direct connection being made that the commands for netsh on Vista are the same as they are on XP. For the record, I'm a successful fiddler that remembers where he's been and know what I've done to make something work. In my experience, 90% of computer problems are software related, so it seems reasonable to me to start there and work down to the hardware.

Flying Fox: A couple weeks ago I was trying to find out which channel the laptop was using to connect to the neighbors wireless network. I was unable to find it, so that was my first frustration. This is my second frustration in a short amount of time. Hence, increasingly frustrated. Now, I use XP on my desktop, so I don't use it daily like my GF does and she doesn't try to do anything close to administrative tasks. I'm the one who handles everything administration related. I'm not against Vista, I just lack the intimate familiarity with it as I have with XP. The last time I did anything administrative related on her laptop was when she first got it: I installed an anti-virus and firewall, and on rare occasion setup the wireless adapter.

Anyway, the problem has been identified already: A sort of dead NIC in the desktop. Sometimes the NIC would work wonderfully and sometimes it didn't work at all.

mikeymike wrote:

Provided a switch isn't in use.

You cannot use switches for Wi-Fi.