iMac800 SD can't log on to Internet

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Posted:
in Genius Bar edited January 2014
Well - I finally got the new machine. It's a sweet piece of work but I can't log onto the internet. I'm using OSX obviously and Comcast is my provider. Their support line tried to blame the problem on an area outage (not true since my tangerine iMac works fine) and then claimed that they didn't support OSX. Can anyone help me here?



I'm using DHCP with a cable modem. Not sure what the settings should be but maybe I'm missing something obvious. Built-in ethernet is the active port.



When I boot-up MS Explorer it simply says "server not found."



Help. Thanks.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 4
    stimulistimuli Posts: 564member
    What sort of router is it plugged into? try swapping the two imac cables.



    Make sure TCP/IP is set to dhcp, via ethernet. Double check the two mac's preferences side by side, make sure they are exact (except for their local IP address).
  • Reply 2 of 4
    eugeneeugene Posts: 8,254member
    All you should need to do is use the same DHCP ID, unless your ISP does something funky like lock your connection to one MAC address.
  • Reply 3 of 4
    turkey boyturkey boy Posts: 23member
    Problem solved. Thanks both. After thirty minutes on the phone with Comcast last night I was ready to pull my hair out. I tried again this morning and actually got a tech who knew a thing or two. Turns out Eugene was right, in a sense. Comcast takes the MAC addresses from your computer and saves them in their server. So when my new iMac tried to connect, the Comcast server didn't recognize the MAC addresses. This was solved by doing two things. One, power cycling the cable modem. Two, and more importantly, deleting the old MAC addresses in their server (he referred to this as 'pushing the account'). Once this was done my new iMac SD was cruising the web in fine fashion. Thanks both for you suggestions.
  • Reply 4 of 4
    cosmocosmo Posts: 662member
    Tech support is not usually very mac friendly. I had some problems with my @home service about 6 months ago. Normally i can solve problems myself because we were plagued with problems 2 years or so ago when we first entered the world of high speed internet and after hours spent on the phone with tech support i leaned of all their little tricks on how to get the connection going again.



    I found the key to dealing with tech support is to keep asking for someone in a higher position until you cannot go any higher. To fix my problem 6 months ago i spent over an hour on the phone before they finally transfered me to their "mac specialist" who was able to fix my problem in a matter of minutes. He gave me his name and told me to ask for him personally next time i call. Also it was interesting because after the problem was fixed we stayed on the phone for about a half hour talking about different pieces of routing software.



    Long story short: when dealing with tech support, never settle for the first person you talk to, they usually know little to nothing about macs.

    :-)
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