failed job interview because of this one question

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Before attempting anything technical, I would always check to see if the bill had been paid first.

We have a training building that uses a BT Broadband connection at our place and it get's cut off every three months because someone forgets to pay the bill!

 

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Ever heard of direct debit?

 

Some basic network Tools you should look at

Ping - basic connectivity test, checks connections between one computer and another - useful to perform basic check network is working

Tracert - shows the path taken to reach one end of a network to another - useful to find where the issue is occuring (ie internal, isp, in the ether or at t'other end

Pathping - similar to tracert but mainly used to find where the traffic is slowing down, as it gives you statistics based on time taken to respond

arp (i seem to use arp -a most these days, as our network is too stable! hence no fun) - used to find mac addresses of IPs that have been connected to, best to use this after pinging, also only shows mac addresses on local subnet as anything not on the local subnet goes straight to your router/gateway

netstat - useful to show active connections, also can find what programs are using which ports (handy for malware busting)

nslookup - used to check DNS and hostname resolution

portqry - you need to download this (im being kicked out of work now doh!) look into this, can query open ports on machines etc.

 

Because the symptom was so vague and general I don't think they were really trying to gauge the OP's knowledge of the ins and outs of the system and all the neat little tools. I think they just wanted to see the OPs thought process and see if he/she approached the problem in a systematic fashion. Based on the OP, it sounds like they answered the question with a shotgun approach.

 

Yeh I can see its got more functionality. What I mean is that when i get to cover IPv6 I will get a refresher of any new tools that have popped up (been a while since I done the whole ipv4 topic)

 

ok, so i emailed the company today to see if they would tell me what was causing it. They replaied back and said IE was set to look for a non existent proxy. Now, how would i rectifiy this? would it be a simple case of going into the options and resetting IE to default settings or is it a little more involved? I have no experience with proxies or their set ups so any info will be appreciated.

 

I'm in the habit of pinging 4.2.2.2 before anything else. If it works I don't have to walk to a switch or climb under a desk to check for green lights or loose cables, if it works I don't need to ping the loopback, or check drivers, or verify that I have a valid IP address, nor ping the gateway etc.... If it works I can simply ping a url and then I know to either start troubleshooting DNS or some browser issue.

Oh and it's a handy DNS server to remember. In the 10+ years I've been using it in troubleshooting I've not known it to be down.

 

It's easy enough- internet options > tools > connections > lan settings

and key to remember along with taking a look at the hosts file for certain behaviors - lots of malware like to make changes there, people like to play jokes, and I had a customer send a PC off to the point of sale vendor for some work, well whoever worked on it thought that it should be locked down so they had put a fake proxy in (it actually said NO INTERNET) - the only problem being that this was actually the PC acting as the server for the POS system and it used the internet for credit card processing over the internet!! For the life of me I don't know why the tech working for the POS software company wouldn't know this about their software.

 

Wow - I always ping 4.2.2.2 as well

 

ok just had a quick look i assume i just uncheck the box to get rid of the proxy? Thanks guys for all your help. I can sleep a little easier at night now

 

Yeh then IE does not use a proxy.
A non-existent proxy could also be an incorrect name/ip for the proxy entered there.

nothing to do with exam but but while your in there have a poke about. The advanced option allows you to exclude sites to go through proxy (ie your local intranet, local switches/webservers etc..) and IE would check on the local network

 

Harsh question (if that is how they worded it, although thats what you would hear from a user), in real life the first thing you would have done is try the net from your own PC, that way you would have known instantly if it was localised or an infrastructure issue.

 

true, although i didn't have this option at the time. they told me that Ie states this problem on the bottom of the screen but i didn't spot it. Doesn't it wasn't there though. I didn't know ie did that type of thing

 

Just my outlook on the situation, I think the theory could have been to see how you would go about your troubleshooting methodology. Being a server support question, not knowing the type of job role and your level of experience, I will work with assumed rules. I think what could of been one of many possible reasons out of both technical and non-technical issues, was if you tried so many troubleshooting steps, it would take you significantly longer than someone who has posted (on this thread) a few methods who would arrive at a fault-resolution under per-say a more constricted time environment, i.e server down for xyz company and requires uptime ASAP. I also throw in the suggestion, that you mentioned, that you didn't have the time to check other things. You can't say you will or won't have much time in some server fault environment. I remember I was a network engineer and I had a 20-30 minute window to bring all systems "green". It took me a few steps to come to this end result. Now you mentioned you went over the allocated time specified for your assessment. What about if this was in a real-time environment, who would fix the issue.

 

To be honest, my experience with servers is nil. I've just passed my A+ and have been doing IT for a small company for a couple of years. The company doesn't have a server as it only has PC's in the whole building so I have no idea about the lay out of server 2003 etc i've managed to have a go at active directory and sussed how to create users, groups and assign rights etc but nothing more. The job i went for said it was a 1st line support role and no experience was needed so i thought i'd go for it. I need to get a job in a larger company to progress my career and i'm finding it increasingly hard to get any where with inerviews. I did find that the test was a bit harsh considering how the job was advertised.

 

I think that's a bit over the top for no experience needed, but not for 1st line. One of the first things I look at is proxy settings whe users have issues with accessing internet/intranet.

 

Now i know about it, that's what i'll be doing too

 

Wow so these people asked you 11 questions on an OS you had no experience on, and you only fluffed ONE ! M8 I hope I never get to share an interview shortlist with you You should be definately give yourself a big, um, pat on the back...? You know, for getting the other ten right, in such a time critical environment.
regards
Llew

 

lol, the other ones were quite easy like changing a default font on outlook and adding a new inbox to it, making a volume shadow copy etc. So i was familiar with how to do stuff like that on xp in the disk management so i guessed it would be fairly similar to that. But it was pretty much a guess at what i kind of already knew. Thanks for the compliment though.