There are 5 computers connected to a router that is hooked up to broadband. One of the five computers cannot receive any packets for no apparant reason. In the connection propeties, it says packets sent (approx. 70 - which is low) packets received - 0. I am stumpted to why the settings are so screwed up. Any Ideas anyone?

DHCP settings? Sounds to me like it's not getting the correct IP address off of the router. I take it that this is a small "Workgroup" network setup and there isn't a domain controller server involved anywhere? On that basis, I am also making an assumption that the router is assigning IP addresses to each client PC.

Go to a command prompt and type IPCONFIG /ALL on a working PC and the broken one and see if there are any notable differences (the IP address should be different but similar).

Let us know if that helps

By the way, if the address on the faulty PC is 127.0.0.1 or 192.16.x.x, then those are internal addresses that Windows assigns itself when it can't find anything else to give it a proper address.

Alright, cheers for the tip. Heres what I came up with - A working computer has all the usual things listed in the IPCONFIG/ALL but on the broken computer, there are things missing. These Being:

DHCP Server
DNS Servers
Lease Obtained
Lease Expires

Also on the broken computer, These things dont have a value:
Default Gateway

(In addition, on the working computer there is a field 'IP address' whereas on the broken computer the field is labled 'autoconfiguration IP Address' - I dont know if these are the same thing but I thought it was worth a mention)

Do you think it is possible to correct?

Yes, that's exactly what I was saying - the broken PC isn't getting any DCHP response from the router so it isn't being assigned an IP address and is, therefore, "auto-configuring" its own IP.

The first thing to rule out would be a faulty network cable. Try taking one out of one of the working PCs and connecting that between the broken PC and the router. Then reboot the PC and run run IPCONFIG /ALL again to see if it's any different.

Is there any LED alight on the network card of the broken PC? (This is only relevant if the working PCs have an LED to show when a connection has been detected).

Might be worth verifying the Speed and Duplex settings on the network card. If it is set to Auto-detect, this can be very problematic. At the office, I have to set all of my PCs to specifically say 100Mbps, Half-duplex - when they're set to Auto-detect (which is normally the default value for network cards), they don't see the network.

There is nothing wrong with the connection point between that broken PC and the router because like you suggested, I have tried a different PC from that point and its fine. When the cable is pluged into the network card, LED lights do come on ruling out the possiblity that the card does not work either. I changed the Duplex option to 100 half like suggested and again no luck. Im stumped!

I've fixed this problem now. So if anyone else experiences any of the problems I did, all you have to do is simply download spy subtract and install it. Then it will explain that the network settings are wrong and that it will fix it for you. Let it and restart, as told, and Bob's your Uncle!

Have you got a link?

Guess he refers to this one:
http://www.intermute.com/products/spysubtract.html