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Problems installing neuf box and ADSL


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Trying to install a neuf box on a computer running an English language version of Windows XP. Loads files from the CD supplied with the box and then comes up with a message that it cannot find the peripheral, I assume the neuf box. The Windows hardware installer wizard when run instead gives the message that the neuf logo is not recognised as being compatible with Windows XP and to continue may disturb the computer either now or in the future. Anyone had a similar problem with a computer brought over from the UK with English based software. I would like to be sure that it is not a duff computer or incompatible software before spending 45 euros getting a neuf bloke in.....................J
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Thanks for the reply. Having watched the videos at

http://assistance.neuf.fr/neuf/internet/neufbox/fichethem.do?id=14815&type=richDataThemSheet

I note that the letter shown does not look like the one received before the neuf box arrived a couple of days ago. Also the dial-up connection and telephone are still working and I understand there may be a period when this should not be so during the switch over at the exchange or wherever, did this happen for you. Only the wifi light and green indicator is lit up on the neuf box and the loading of the software seems to go wrong at step seven. So it may be that we are trying too soon to get things up and running. So what signs do you look for that the system is ready for the installation other than the arrival of the letter?.....................................J

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There is a section on the Neuf website where you can follow the progress of your ADSL order. Do that first and you'll be able to see how far they've got to.

http://moncompte.neuf.fr/extranet/servlet/NavAbonnes?tache=abonnes&action=suivicmd

From memory, it took about 15-20 days for the changeover from FT to Neuf to take place and I was without a line for about 3-4 days...

The box arrived very promptly but without the required connection it just sat there!

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Many thanks. The current provider is AOL and the offer for the neuf box is with unlimited telephone and TV on the the computer, not that it was wanted and includes WiFi, again no current use for this. The help line in English said that the telephone is free to all the 50 locations shown on their map we have been told so I hope they are right in this. I understand that calls to mobiles are to be avoided! Have looked at order progress and they say another 19 days before finalisation of the installation so we will just wait now and see what happens when we load the software again. I understand that the aborted attempts we have made might cause a problem but also note that there is an option to deinstall before reinstallation in the software that came on the CD with the box so will try that then with fingers crossed. This has not been that easy as we are doing this to help a friend who lives a few ks away and phase lag in communications has caused some problems............................J



 
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  • 2 weeks later...
Further to my last the telephone has been cut off and the internet connection also cut off from last Friday. The letter called Votre Fiche D'Identité à conserver with the Identifiant de Conexion (login) and password has not yet been received. Our friend is a little upset as she is now not able to communicate with the outside world and I was wondering if I were to install the Neuf box now the telephone might work at least. I hesitate to do this as the Fiche D'Identité is not yet to hand. On looking at the website for Neuf I find that 19 days from the 25th October has been quoted before everything is finished. I understand that calls to the English speaking help line has resulted in our friend being passed to a French speaking only help desk and was therefore of little help to her. A call to France telecom revealed that the line has been switched over awaiting the connection of the modem. Any thoughts anyone...................J
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We transfered over from FT to neuf and the timescales quoted are about right.  As far as I can remember although it said that I needed the fiche d'identite, when I set it up I don't recall having to input anything, it was all done from the disk.  I would say go ahead and try anyway, it can always be uninstalled afterwards if it doesn't work[:D].

Good luck!

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Well I went round to visit our friend today and tried connecting up the neuf box and ran the installation software. Got the lights flashing in sequence which after several minutes stopped with the right ones on all the time. The system has not completed installation and now comes up with a message saying that the assistant has not detected any peripheral network connected. I assume this means that the link to give access to the internet and the ISP is not yet in place. The phone works however so our friend is much happier than she was. I will ask her tomorrow to see if her dial up network connection is now working as I understand from one of the many files that neuf have available on this subject that this may be the case until the ADSL link is connected. I must say it seems a bit daft to expect folk to look at these installation files on-line when they cannot do this as they cannot yet go on-line. It would certainly pay to do research on this before the dial-up connection is severed. I would not been aware of some of this info had it not been for the help received from kind folk on Living and Total France. One such file told me to look for a capacitor in the telephone socket if I had problems and guess what, there was a capacitor which has now, according to instruction, been removed. Thanks for the help and any further comments gratefully received here................................J
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[quote]I must say it seems a bit daft to expect folk to look at these

installation files on-line when they cannot do this as they cannot yet

go on-line. It would certainly pay to do research on this before the

dial-up connection is severed. I would not been aware of some of this

info had it not been for the help received from kind folk on Living and

Total France.[/quote]

I received a little booklet with the Neuf box which explained a lot of things, including the dial-up option. Does your friend not have that?

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OK have looked at the booklet supplied with the box but nothing about getting low speed dial-up working. In any case the website now shows all is completed and we should be able to go on-line with ADSL. Attempts to reload the sofware from the disc supplied with the neuf box fails at the point where a message appears saying that the network is not detected. The phone however works well. Tried deleting the software and reloading but to no avail. Even tried pushing the reset button on the neuf box and then reloading but  the result is always the same. Tried changing the ADSL filter on the phone line connection but the same result. All I can think of now is to try another computer and see if this also fails at the same point. If it does it would point to neuf being the problem and not our friend's computer. As luck would have it I do have a working spare having just replaced our machine. The only option then would be to lay out 45 euros to get them to send an engineer to sort it. Their English speaking help line has not impressed me at all. Do you think I have missed anything?...............................................J
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Have you tried setting the machine up without using the Neuf software.

When I tried to set it up using their disc it wouldn't work so........

I loaded the drivers from the disc as if I was installing any other bit of kit.

Then used the Windows add new connection route , inputting the Neuf supplied details where required and hey presto it worked.

Not very elegant, and the Neuf diagnostics didn't work, but I was able to connect., even though the Neuf software kept saying that the network wasn't there!

 

 

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I loaded the drivers from the disc as if I was installing any other bit of kit.

Then used the Windows add new connection route , inputting the Neuf supplied details where required and hey presto it worked.

Sounds interesting please do tell me more. Not really software orientated here. Our friend uses Windows XP and I am not familiar with that as I run Vista and Millenium here.....................J

PS She contacted me this morning using her mobile and said that the phone via the neuf box has stopped working and the blue telephone indicator on the box has gone out! Back to square one! I note that the web site still shows her installation as complete.

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I expect that the drivers have probably been installed by the Neuf disc already.

So in Windows XP the steps are

1 Start

2 Control Panel

3 Network Connection

4 Create New Network Connection

5 Next

6 Connect to Internet

7 Set Up Manually

8 Connect using Broadband that requires a User Name and Password

9 Type "Neuf"

10Enter  User name , Password (Twice) ,Tick Both Boxes (From the Neuf Letter)

 11 Tick Create Shortcut

12 Finish

 

 

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Thanks again all help is appreciated very much indeed.

Three steps forward and two back! Ok have isolated the problem to her computer and I suspect the the XP software. Tried the steps you suggested for Windows XP but no go. More on that later. Tried my spare computer running Millenium and no problems having loaded the software from the neuf set up disk. Managed to go online on broadband and everything seemed to be working. I noted that the sytem tried to run the aol 7 dialup software so I cancelled that and ran aol 9 which had already been used on our spare machine on broadband. She has aol 8 on her machine and it has only been used for dial up, maybe there is something to do there! The strange thing is that having got on-line with our machine I noted that I had used her old address and password. This puzzles me as neuf have now provided an identifier and password which are not like the ones that she has been using for aol. I believe that the ad for the system she now has said something about her being able to continue to use her old email address etc. I can only assume that the new neuf id is for looking at her telephone account on-line or whatever.

I would have liked to reload the XP software but she does not have the disk which raises questions in my mind about its origins. She was given the system set up and working  by someone else so its history is a bit unknown. I tried the steps you mentioned using the neuf supplied data but no go. Maybe I should have used her old aol data, password and email address etc ? The telephone started working again when I reloaded the neuf box disk. No clues as to why it stopped working as the box has been live all the time and nobody has messed with it or the connections as far as I can tell. The phone seems not to need the computer to be switched on so why it failed is another unknown. I noted that disconnecting the phone line and reconnecting it resulted in the neuf box re-setting up the connection so I don't know what caused the loss of phone communication!

As far as internet connection goes I think the problem must be to do with the way the neuf box is driven by her computer. Is it worth me playing about with the XP internet connection software in the manner you suggest using her aol address and password do you think? Of course I am hoping she will be able to get a new machine which might sove the problem. I am not sure it would be worth buying just new XP software for a machine that is over four years old and of doubtful origins, also no point in calling in a neuf engineer as it worked with my machine, what think you?...........................J

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I had this problem. You must make sure you follow the installation instructions to the letter. If you plug something in before you are supposed to, it will not load properly. Its easy when you have done it before and dont read the instructions to do things in the wrong order. Hope this helps.

 

John

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Right well this gets stranger and stranger. Contacted our friend this am and the phone had stopped working again. I told her to pull out the power plug to the neuf box and then plug it in again. The box seemed to run through its light flashing sequence and after a few seconds the phone started to work again. I notice that the top panel of the box, when held down for about three seconds, turns off the indicator lights. If you release it and then hold it down for another three seconds it turns them back on again. Lights on or off the phone keeps on working. However I am wondering if it is possible that a timer of some sort starts when you turn off the lights which eventually turns off the phone! I suggested to our friend that she turns off the lights when she is not using the system to save power and locally generated heat in the neuf box. I am now wondering if that was good advice! Don't remember seeing anything about this in the neuf booklet other than turning off the lights in the manner described. For two days running the phone seems to have been turned off during the night, any clues anyone.

I note from reading the neuf email that gives her neuf identifier and neuf password that it seems to be expected that she would be running AOL 9. In fact she has been running AOL 8. I propose to go round there later today and delete the stuff I put in yesterday on Internet Connections in the Control panel. I will then load up AOL 9 and see if it then allows the computer to go on-line through AOL 9 using her old password and pseudo as it did yesterday when I tried it with my spare computer. I note that the email from neuf suggests that as she was already an aol customer this should work. If that does not work I can try deleting and reloading the neuf box sofware and if that does not work I will go back to internet connections and try to set up a broadband connection using her AOL password and pseudo. If that does not work I may shoot myself or her! Comments?..................J

 

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Hi Jackie

Pressing the front cover switches the lights on and off, as you have discovered, and that is all it does.

I would have to agree with ChooChoo.  Go back to basics.  Start again and follow EXACTLY the steps as directed.  Ensure you are connecting the right cable at the right time.  Use the diagnostic section in the guide.  I have installed neuf on two computers, one a PC and the other a laptop, one via the ethernet cable and the other wifi.  They both run XP and IE6 (don't like IE7).  I did not have to play around with any settings.  I can't comment on previous AOL installations, I had wanadoo and unfortunately can't remember much about what, if anything I had to do with it.  I think I just uninstalled it afterwards.

I do hope this helps you, and if you have already done all this, my apologies and commiserations.  Above all, good luck[:D]

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 I have passed on the info about the reset button on the neuf box (elsewhere on this site http://www.completefrance.com/cs/forums/1038606/ShowPost.aspx) to our friend so she can get her phone working again if it goes off tonight, she has a match stick, wood dry insulating for the use of, at the ready. The phone by the way is plugged into the neuf box and no other phones are connected to the wall sockets. I suspect the phone fault is not linked to her problems to do with getting her computer on-line with the neuf box.

Each time I have loaded the neuf software I have followed destructions to the letter, no problems when doing this with my spare computer.


AOL 9 loaded as an update to AOL 8 but would not go on-line at the end of installation as it looked for a dial-up connection and of course found none. It asked for a Lieu which I specified as Domicile but it would not record this no matter how often I tried. Emails etc were transferred ok from the previous version. Loading AOL 9 as a new installation gave me the possibility of specifying a Lieu but it could not find an ADSL connection. Following BJSLIV suggestion and trying to specify AOL in Internet Connections in the control panel was not a success as the error message 769 The specified destination is not reachable message came up each time I tried it. Got the same result yesterday when I tried the neuf ID and password. So all in all today's effort has been like all the others, a waste of time. I tried reloading the neuf software after trying to load AOL 9 but no go, came up with the same message that we have seen several times before, that No network can be detected.

I am sure the problem is somewhere in the XP software that selects the connection for internet access but where I am not sure. All Virus and Firewall software has been deleted so it is not that blocking things.

Our friend is now thinking about a new computer but it is really frustrating that we cannot get this one on-line with the neuf box. I think that the fact that my spare micro worked ok indicates that it is her software that is at fault. Other things she has on USB work ok and I have tried using different USB sockets all to no avail. She will borrow an XP disk to try reloading her operating system but I have my doubts that this will work even if windows will let her do it. I really hate computers!................J


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Hi again Jackie

Never having used dial up on my current computers, and thus never had any call for AOL et al, I had removed them long ago.  Have you considered uninstalling AOL altogether and then doing the install of neuf.  I can think of no reason for them to be on there?

I do hope you manage to get it sorted, before your neighbour has to be exterminated![6]

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Ok folks panic over. Got it up and running today with the help of another friend who was familiar with XP. The problem was that although most of the software had been loaded from the neuf box disk, the drivers had not been loaded. We discovered this having decided to treat the neuf box as if it were any other sort of hardware being connected to USB. The system found an unidentified USB device and showed two groups of software one of them being the drivers. These we loaded and then ran the neuf software and away she went through internet explorer. One problem for aol users is that they may have little or no experience of Internet Explorer and it may seem alien to go on-line without having to give a pseudo and password which is what she can do now. Her aol password and pseudo were still needed to get into her mail box of course. The Neuf with AOL site is a little different to the AOL site with its welcome screen and she will, I hope, get used to using it.

Trying to get on-line through the aol 9 software is still no go which is strange as I managed it when I used my Millennium based computer. Also strange is that with my spare computer the drivers were loaded automatically when the neuf software was loaded.

I think that the change over at AOL/Neuf is causing some problems like the fact that the the letter called Votre Fiche D'Identité has not yet arrived but was discovered as an email which was sent after her line and dial-up facility was terminated and was not needed anyway to get on-line. She probably will need it to look at her account but due to some technical problem those are not available to anyone at the time of writing. I think that the English speaking help line could have been of more help to her and she should not have been shunted around to different operators and then cut-off after 30 minutes. The jury is still out as far as neuf/AOL is concerned here but time and experience will harden opinion one way or another, watch this space. Still all is well that ends well, said with fingers crossed, and the phone is still working. Thanks to all for their comments and helpful assistance........................................................J


     
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