Networking has seen a huge gain in popularity over the last several years. Prices for networking equipment have dropped, a whole slew of network products are available for both business and home networking, the majority of new PCs and laptops come equipped with network adapters right out of the box, and setup has become much easier. As a result, many computers are connected to office and/or home networks, both wired and wireless.

As easy as it can be to set up a new network, networks can be complex and involve many parameters and components that can easily be misconfigured or fail. Troubleshooting a broken network connection can be a daunting task for the average user. Following instructions to set up a basic network from scratch is one thing - finding a problem is a whole different story. This article covers a number of typical scenarios of a PC connected to a network and offers a list of logical and straight forward troubleshooting steps for each specific scenario to make the troubleshooting process easier and take some of the scariness out of it.

The instructions and troubleshooting steps found in this article are mainly geared towards computers running Windows 2000 or XP as they are currently the most common Windows operating systems connected to networks. While Windows 9x/ME can also be connected to a network, they are outdated versions of Windows and can be a pain in the ass to get to work on a network. However, even though the examples given are usually Win2K / XP commands, they either will work in other operating systems or have similar equivalent commands. Additionally, most of the troubleshooting steps are generic enough that they apply to other operating systems as well.