Vodafone K4505 Modem - It's Showing As Connected But I Get No Internet Access

[midlander5]

Hi there,

Until now I've been happily using an older K3520 dongle, running Mobile Connect 9.4.6 under Win7 x64. Good mobile coverage, no other issues.

Optimistically, I've just upgraded my stick to a newer K4505, signing a new contract in the process. How did I predict it would be a nightmare...? Here's what happens:

Vodafone Mobile Connect launches fine... as it always did. With a healthy signal strength displayed under 'Mobile Connections', I hit 'Connect'.

I'm rewarded in just a couple of seconds with confirmation that I am connected to 'Vodafone UK 3G' or 'Vodafone UK HSUPA' (depending on coverage). There's a brief flurry of activity as a few kb of data are sent to the server. This has always seemed to be quite a normal thing as the connection initially beds down to a quiescent state of 0bps in both uplink and downlink. Maybe it's checking for updates...?

Now things go wrong. Loading my web browser gives a 'This web page is not available' message. Nor can I use Outlook, or access any other Internet services.

So I'm being told by by VMC that I'm 'Connected' - but I'm not.

Under the 'Manage Devices' tab, K4505 appears as the default (indeed the only) device. And under 'status' it's highlighted green as my 'Active' device.

I've tried removing and reinstalling VMC 9.4.6. No change.

I appreciate that it's tricky supporting any device/service on a huge number of slightly different systems. But honestly... we might as well be living in 1995, not 2010 when it comes to so-called Plug & Play. My real annoyance is the lack of transparency about all this stuff from both sales staff and your own 'Support' area of the site. I'm certainly no expert. But why not just be upfront and tell people that this stuff is often flaky and hard for even moderately IT-literate people to wrestle with?

By the way, it's frustrating that UK customers - a huge market for you - cannot yet benefit from VMC v10.0.201. We're told that 'This release contains wrong settings for Vodafone UK. A corrected release 'will be available soon.' Great... but when? Next month? Next year?

Many thanks for your time and for listening to these points that are meant constructively...

[Retired-Reidar]

Hello Midlander5 and welcome to the eForum.

I can appreciate how frustrating this is and am of the belief that we may be looking at a firewall issue here. Please can you advise what anti-virus you are using as well as whether you have attempted to temporarily disable it, this would prove useful in trying to narrow down the source of the problem.

Additionally, you may want to try creating a new administrator profile on your PC (Control panel> users), this will allow you attempt a connection from a fresh profile and forward the outcome to ourselves as always.

looking forward to your update.

Reidar

eForum Team

[midlander5]

Many thanks for getting back to us Reidar,

No it doesn't appear to be a firewall/antivirus thing. Turning off McAfee makes no difference (and anyhow, there's no problem when I revert to my older K3520 stick). Tried creating a new Administrator profile but that doesn't change things.

So to recap: I've got two different devices listed under "Manage Devices": K3520 and the newer K4505.

After the standard 'searching for device', 'mobile device detected' and 'searching for network', I'm invited to 'connect to Vodafone UK 3G' (or 3G+).
Connection is established successfully under VMC 9.4.6, and a short burst of data (10kB or so) is passed on the uplink - a process that takes just a few seconds, at a quoted speed of around 5-10kpbs - before everything settles down to 0bps on both uplink and downlink.

However, it stubbornly refuses to pass any data (web, email etc) despite telling me that it's "Connected" with excellent signal strength.

By the way, the SMS client works fine. I can send and receive text messages via the VMC dashboard, so the dongle is obviously connected to the network and recognized as such.

Cheers
Chris
Win7 Pro x64 / VMC 9.4.6

[midlander5]

I just noticed something...

Looking under Control Panel > Network and Internet > Network Connections - I can see a connection called 'Mobile Broadband Connection' that's connected to 'Unidentified Network'.

Right-clicking on 'Status' tells me:

IPv4 connectivity: No Internet access
IPv6 connectivity: No Internet access
Media state: Enabled
Duration: 00:14:45 (yep, that's how long I've been connected)
Speed: 21.6Mbps (that's encouraging... suggests HSPA+)

Clicking on 'Properties' then informs me:

Connect using: Vodafone Mobile Broadband Network Adapter (Huawei)
This connection uses the following items:
Client for MS Networks
File and Printer Sharing
Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4)


''Troubleshooting' under 'Windows Network Diagnostics' also tells me that 'Your mobile broadband device was disconnected or has never been connected to Vodafone UK' (this is while VMC confirms that I'm connected).

So I'm definitely "Connected" to Vodafone... but there's something happening at the network/connections level in Windows that's not letting me get any further onto the Internet.

Hope this helps & thanks again,
Chris

[Retired-Reidar]

Hello midlander5

How bizarre, either the dongle itself is faulty and is connecting but not 'transporting' data to your PC, or for some reason ther is still some sort of device conflict.

Please can you try teh following and advise what happens:

1. Start

2. COntrol panel

3. Phone and modem options (if not visible switch to classic view on top left, I'm confident you're quite tech savvy though)

4. in phone and modem options click on the Advanced tab

5. remove any instances of Huwei or Globetrotter modem, click OK

6. Restart your computer with modem plugged in, it should auto register as a modem again

7. try to connect.

Thanks

Reidar

eForum Team

[midlander5]

That's not so good.

I deleted the Huawei modem as suggested, then restarted and replugged in the stick.

It's installed a new modem (called "Vodafone Mobile Broadband Modem (Huawei)"), and Properties tells me that "this device is working normally".

'Properties' also confirms these details:
Driver date: 20/12/2009
Driver version: 2.0.3.828

There are a couple of driver files installed, albeit with slightly different pathways. Note the two different locations, 'drivers' and 'DRIVERS':

Windows\system32\DRIVERS\ewusbmdm.sys
Windows\system32\drivers\modem.sys

By the way, this all works under x64, yes? I can't remember if I had to manually hunt for 64-bit drivers when I originally installed VMC with my old K3520 stick, many moons ago.

Anyhow, the upshot of all this is that I now can't get a connection at all: "Mobile connection not possible" (RAS error code 691), with advice to "Set your current mobile device as the default device" and "delete the device... and add it back again".

I've now reverted to VMC 9.4.5 'Lite', by the way, which auto-installed from the dongle after I cleared everything out and started again from scratch. Does Win7 x64 need full-fat 9.4.6 to talk to the K4505?

I had been getting by with my old K3520 as a fallback solution, but now that too just hangs for eternity in "Connecting to Vodafone 3G UK...." and gets no further. So a week on from 'upgrading' to a newer dongle, I'm no longer able to make any kind of connection.

[midlander5]

Hi Reidar, It's still not clear to me whether the K4505 will work out of the box with Windows7 64-bit. Has anyone actually tried it at Vodafone?

There are plenty of DL sites offering "Huawei K4505 Driver Windows 7 X64". Do I really need to search dodgy file-sharing sites for drivers to make a new-ish dongle work with a new-ish computer?


Thanks a lot,
Chris

[Retired-Reidar]

Hi Chris

I've run out of ideas on what else we can do to get this working, in terms of testing I can't get hold of a Windows 7 x64 machine as yet, all our company models are currently running XP, and I use a Mac at home.

It is looking like we may need to explore the possibility of additional drivers (as stated in your post), the only problem is I'm unable to advise which ones, if any, are safe.

Reidar

eForum Team

[oksid]

Hi!

Greetings from Spain.
I just wanted to let you know that I am using the k4505 with Win7 x64 Pro, vmc 9.4.4.17702, Vodafone Spain.
I connected the dongle to the laptop and all the drivers and software auto-installed. In my case everyting works fine out of the box, there was no issue with the drivers.

Regards,

JF