Some help with Internet Connection please

[leon]

Hi Guys, just a question about accessing a browser on Alice's desktop.
I have resurrected a second desktop for Alice to use instead of her lappy, it works well and has been tided up.
Being a desktop it dose not have a WiFi switch like her lappy so as i have done with my own desktop I loaded a Netgear wireless adapter, which loaded fine and shows it has excellent reception and seems fine.

Now the fact that this desktop has no Browser as such how do i set it up so that i can access the Internet.
There are no Icons as such for me to click on, so where do i go to open, Mozzilla or similar.

There is probably a simple answer, but it has escaped me so to speak, some help would be appreciated.

Thank You.

Leon

[mithrandir (Andrew)]

Leon, do you mean that Windows has detected the wifi card and connected to your network?
I'm surprised Windows hasn't forced IE onto the PC. Is IE on the taskbar rather than a desktop icon?
You can download the Firefox and Thunderbird installers to another PC and copy them across - say on a USB stick.

[Exfso (Peter)]

Leon, Google Chrome is an excellent browser, it blows IE out of the water. Why Microsoft cannot get their browser right is beyond me, having said that I suppose I have set myself up for a sh1tfight with IE officianados.

[julianh72 (Julian)]

Leon,
I suspect Internet Explorer is still there on the PC, even if you can't find an icon on the desktop or in the Start menu, as it's a pretty integral part of Windows. Try searching for a folder called "C:/Program Files/Internet Explorer" or similar.
If you can't find it, try searching the system for "Internet Explorer" or "IE", and if that fails, try going into Control Panel and force a Windows Update, and / or check for installed / uninstalled Windows components.

[leon]

Thank you, at least that gives me a few options, will let you know how it all goes.

Leon

[leon]

Well I have tried everything suggested, still no joy, I have considered purchasing a new Adapter, as the one that i have been using has been used before for my own Lappy.
Could the older adapter be faulty, although it shows excellent results when i mouse over the icon on the tool bar.

Leon

[leon]

Many thanks for your support, I finally have it up and running.

Leon

[OICURMT]

Originally Posted by leon

Many thanks for your support, I finally have it up and running.

Leon

That's good news...

For future reference, if an operating system is missing a browser and you can't find it, you can use the program "ftp" to access the internet to download files if the server supports it.

The location for all mozilla releases : ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/

The latest build : ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.or...leases/latest/


To access these files without a browser, open a terminal session ("cmd" on windows, "xterm" on linux), you can start an ftp session by typing the command "ftp". (To get a terminal session on WindowsXP, click "Start", then "Run", then type "cmd"... Windows 7, click "Start", then "Search Programs and files", then type "cmd"... if you are on linux and don't know how to do this, then seriously, should you be on linux? ).

Then you start ftp, you will see the following prompt

ftp>

From there, you can open a session and login. (NOTE: when an anonymous server asks you for a password, it is standard practice to type in your email address...)

ftp> open ftp.mozilla.org
Connected to ftp.mozilla.org.
220-
220-   ftp.mozilla.org / archive.mozilla.org - files are in /pub/mozilla.org
220-
220-   releases.mozilla.org now points to our CDN distribution network and no longer works for FTP traffic
220
User (ftp.mozilla.org:(none)): anonymous
331 Please specify the password.
Password:
230-
230-   ftp.mozilla.org / archive.mozilla.org - files are in /pub/mozilla.org
230-
230-   Notice: This server is the only place to obtain nightly builds and needs to
230-   remain available to developers and testers. High bandwidth servers that
230-   contain the public release files are available at ftp://releases.mozilla.org/
230-   If you need to link to a public release, please link to the release server,
230-   not here. Thanks!
230-
230-   Attempts to download high traffic release files from this server will get a
230-   "550 Permission denied." response.
230 Login successful.

Once logged in, use the cd command to change directories...

ftp> cd /pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/latest
250 Directory successfully changed.

You can use either the "ls" or the "dir" command to list the files in the current directory.

ftp> dir
200 PORT command successful. Consider using PASV.
150 Here comes the directory listing.
-rw-r--r--    1 ftp      ftp          4382 Jul 17 12:01 KEY
-rw-r--r--    1 ftp      ftp        266415 Jul 17 12:01 MD5SUMS
-rw-r--r--    1 ftp      ftp           836 Jul 17 12:01 MD5SUMS.asc
-rw-r--r--    1 ftp      ftp        293503 Jul 17 12:01 SHA1SUMS
-rw-r--r--    1 ftp      ftp           836 Jul 17 12:01 SHA1SUMS.asc
-rw-r--r--    1 ftp      ftp        719873 Jul 17 12:01 SHA512SUMS
-rw-r--r--    1 ftp      ftp           836 Jul 17 12:01 SHA512SUMS.asc
drwxrwsr-x    4 ftp      ftp          4096 Aug 14 02:16 contrib
drwxrwsr-x    2 ftp      ftp          4096 Jul 17 12:01 contrib-localized
drwxr-xr-x   92 ftp      ftp          8192 Jul 22 15:56 linux-i686
drwxr-xr-x   92 ftp      ftp          8192 Jul 22 15:56 linux-x86_64
drwxrwxr-x   92 ftp      ftp          8192 Jul 22 15:56 mac
drwxr-xr-x    2 ftp      ftp          4096 Jul 22 15:56 source
drwxrwxr-x    6 ftp      ftp          4096 Jul 22 15:56 update
drwxr-xr-x   92 ftp      ftp          8192 Jul 22 15:56 win32
drwxr-xr-x   35 ftp      ftp          4096 Jul 22 15:56 win32-EUballot
226 Directory send OK.
ftp: 1073 bytes received in 0.00Seconds 1073000.00Kbytes/sec.
ftp> ls
200 PORT command successful. Consider using PASV.
150 Here comes the directory listing.
KEY
MD5SUMS
MD5SUMS.asc
SHA1SUMS
SHA1SUMS.asc
SHA512SUMS
SHA512SUMS.asc
contrib
contrib-localized
linux-i686
linux-x86_64
mac
source
update
win32
win32-EUballot
226 Directory send OK.
ftp: 177 bytes received in 0.00Seconds 177000.00Kbytes/sec.

As you can see, there is a win32 directory... just change directories into that one and you will see the latest release for windows. (the actual location of the binary is dependent on the language, in this case, you want the win32/en-GB directory).

Once you are where you want to be, you can issue the get command...

ftp> cd win32/en-GB
ftp> dir
-rw-r--r--    1 ftp      ftp      32029224 Jul 17 06:44 Firefox Setup 31.0.exe
-rw-r--r--    1 ftp      ftp        244136 Jul 17 06:44 Firefox Setup Stub 31.0.exe
ftp> hash
Hash mark printing On  ftp: (2048 bytes/hash mark) .
ftp> get "Firefox Setup 31.0.exe"
#####################################################################
#####################################################################
#####################################################################

Note I used the "hash" command before getting the file. The command toggles an option that spits out a hash (#) every 2kb, that way you can make sure the download is progressing. I've trimmed the output of the hashes in the code above, but when the transfer is complete, you will get the ftp prompt again (ftp>).

Once transferred, you will be wondering... "where did ftp save my file?". Use the local command in ftp "!cd" (windows) or "!pwd" (linux) to see where the ftp program was lauched. This is also where your file was saved.


Hope this helps.

Regards,
OIC!

[leon]

Wow, thanks for that in depth response, I will bookmark this page for future reference.

Leon