Solving Error #80048820 and #80048439
Sunday, March 30th, 2008
That’s a mouthful of a post title but you’d be surprised how many people are running into that error code. I’ve spent a lot of time reading about this so thought it would be worth blogging about - if only to save someone a few hours of time.
The background story is that our modem died a few weeks ago and we purchased a D-Link Wireless 4 Port Router and a NetComm ADSL modem. Yep I know that I could have got all that in one bundle for under a hundred bucks but it was Sunday and an emergency. We picked up what was on the shelf at the time. Easy enough and the office turned into a 802.11b wireless network of 2 PCs running Windows XP and a laptop running Vista. So what’s the problem?
The problem was that we couldn’t log onto MSN Live Messenger on one of the computers. And we couldn’t upload images to WordPress websites from that computer. Several other sites failed to work as well. Error codes #80048820 and #80048439 were the only clue.
So if you’ve visited Fanatic Live and other threads on this you will soon notice not everyone has the same cure. I re-synchronised the time, ran .dll files that were important, deleted a Messenger folder from windows directory, changed the MTU (Maximum Transfer Unit) setting on the modem from 1500 down to 1400 then up to 1436, disabled all firewalls, changed security settings in Internet Explorer and removed any proxy settings, adventured around in the modem and router settings until I was just about done with it for the day. I absolutely felt like giving in.
Now go back a step. Why? Because all of these steps may have cured the issue. What was missing in that list that I rushed through? The answer is that I only changed the MTU to 1436 on the modem. The moment it was changed to match it on the router the problem was solved. So if you’re stuck on this issue I’d suggest following the Fanatic Live thread and following suggestions there. Or, if you’re smarter than me, you’ll catch that second MTU value if you’ve got a separate modem and router. Now the real question is why the MTU made a difference and why was it only on one PC? But its cured.
