Would a network cable (cat 5/6) ever partially work? Or is it all or nothing with them? What about a network jack (RJ-45)?

I've got 2 different situations I'm trying to troubleshoot. One is an IP phone that sort-of works - you can receive calls on it (internal and external), but the caller ID doesn't show who's calling. However you can't make any calls on it, internal or external.

The other problem is the slow network connection issue I just posted a few minutes ago. The Internet can be browsed from the computer, and Outlook is working (which runs through our Exchange server), but Windows Explorer crashes whenever you try to browse network folders.

Hi

To answer your first question, yes, it can happen to have a network cable partially working. It's actually a quite frequent scenario. You would tell the cable is to blame when you notice packets lost.

To rule this out you could, try another cable or try pinging a stable domain like google.com or your designated internet gateway. Go to start > run > type in ping google.com. You will see a sequence of 5 lines and at the end it will produce some statistics on packet loss. You should see 0% packet loss.

Regarding the VoIP phone, it sounds more like a configurations issue. Call your provider or visit its website for assistance. They can check on their end and see were the problem is originated.

Thank you - I'll try your suggestion for the 1st one.

For the IP phone, I do all the configs for them (we have an in-house phone server). I'll double-check all my settings and also try switching some of the cables.

John B - no, I'm sorry, but that's not the issue. explorer.exe is one of the interfaces to your computer - basically the desktop. To see what I'm talking about, open Task Manager, go to the processes tab, then End explorer.exe - everything will vanish except Task Manager. To bring it all back, click File - New Task and then type explorer.exe in the box. This can be a good fix when your desktop icons aren't rendering properly.

As for the IP phone, it ended up being a corrupt user account on the phone server - I deleted the user's acct and recreated it and all was well. I discovered this by using someone else's account on their phone and their account on someone else's phone.

The computer that was having problems on the network ended up getting fixed by changing the network cable. I never did use the suggested PING commands though, but I will keep them in mind for future reference - so thank you YounGun.

Hi

Always a pleasure jcat_3