Had a letter last week from Virgin Media saying that soon I would be given a free broadband upgrade from 4mb to 10mb. Good I thought. The letter suggested I check that my current set top box was able to cope with the new speed when it came along. As it turned out it couldn't and so I arranged for a upgraded cable modem to be installed. The 'old' system was an ethernet cable from the STB going to a Netgear router to which 3 PCs were happily connected to the internet & e-mail. The cable modem was installed this morning with the ethernet cable now going from the modem to the router. First I had problems registering the new modem. After a very lengthy phone call to tech support in India (fortunately I was refunded the charges) registration took place but I still was unable to connect to the internet. Having had to return to work and then re-tried later following more phone calls to tech support and customer services. In the end I re-connected the cables back to the 'old' system and lo and behold internet & e-mail was fine. Several times I then connected the cables via the new modem and back to the 'old' system. Each time no joy with the modem but all systems go with the 'old' system. Once again I contacted tech support and they seemed to be telling me that all was well and it was because my firewall (I use just the standard Windows XP firewall) was not allowing the internet access via the new modem. Now I would have expected the firewall to flag any 'illegal' access and so allow me to give permission but that wasn't the case. Tech support suggested I turn off the firewall and connect to the internet and then switch the firewall back on and all would be OK. That wasn't the case. So, can someone explain if there could be a firewall problem. At present I'm connected again using the 'old' system and all is well but I naturally want it working via the new modem. I'm fairly computer literate so if someone can suggest a fix to my problem then I'm sure I will understand what needs to be done. I've had enough of tech support today and I've just gone round and round in circles with them and so it's pointless contacting them again and so I'm hoping someone on this forum can help and put me out of my misery.
