Stupid issues connecting computer to R-30ib

Specifically, R-30iB Mate Plus, running 9.3, with irVision and irPickTool. Multiple different robots with this configuration, so it's not just a one-robot problem.

A colleague and I both have Windows 10 laptops. Mine, I have no issues connecting to the robot via Ethernet and opening the irVision and irPickTool configuration pages using Chrome, Firefox, or Edge. But my colleague can't get past the "main" page when pointing a browser at the robot's IP address. Any attempt to load the irVision or irPickTool pages results in 30-60sec of the spinny wheel of death, followed by a server timeout. We've tried Chrome and Edge on his laptop with exactly the same result.

We've tried turning the Windows firewall off, and adding the robot's IP address to Windows' list of Trusted Sites, but no joy. I'm stumped, here.

Just for shiggles, I broke out a 10-year-old laptop running Ubuntu 18 (which hasn't been updated in 3 years). And that junker connected without any problems. Except for the Snap and Live displays for irVision -- Firefox only seemed to load a small video buffer, or set of images, then just loop those forever, instead of getting fresh image data from the robot.

My gut feeling is that the issue is something about Windows network security settings on my colleague's laptop, given that the pages that fail are the more complex pages that (I assume) have lots of Javascript and/or HTML 5 for live interactive content. But so far, I haven't found the smoking gun. Anyone know the magic formula to get this to work?

Quote from kwakisaki

- Ethernet cable good?

Yep. We swapped around the three laptops, leaving the cable plugged into the robot the whole time.

In fact, today I tried another old junker laptop, this one with Win10, and it worked fine (same robot, same cable) with Edge and Firefox.

Quote from kwakisaki

- Ethernet port on your colleague's laptop good, bent/crusty pins/available to use driver wise?

Thought of that. Also tried adding a USB-Ethernet adapter to eliminate his built-in port. Exactly the same results.

Quote from kwakisaki

- Possibility your colleague's laptop having an application grabbing the ethernet port VM perhaps?

This is a company-issued machine, so it's not impossible, but I'd rate the likelihood quite low. Our IT dept handles a lot of robot programmers, and no one else is having this kind of trouble.

One aggravating factor is that these robots are on a remote customer site, and we don't have any robots of the same type at the office, so we haven't been able to replicate the issue. We went back to the office just to try, but our R-30iA and R-30ib are running version 7.x and 8.x, with no irVision or irPicktool. The "web" pages those robots serve are mostly static HTML, and worked perfectly with my coworker's laptop

Quote from kwakisaki

- Have you done any low level ping checks?

Oh, yes. Ping works perfectly.

Quote from kwakisaki

- You could try bashing in a switch between the connection to eliminate any negotiation issues?

Hm... that's one thing I haven't tried.

Quote from HawkME

Usually irvision requires VisCtrls to be installed on the PC. Get a copy of that and try to manually install it as admin on that laptop.

I'll do that. But I don't think that's the issue, b/c it's also the irPicktool page that's throwing issues. And I don't think that would use VisCtrls...?

Plus, the other Win10 junker laptop I dug out that is working never had any Fanuc stuff installed on it (it was a game machine for the kids at home, never got used for anything work-related), and it's working fine.

Quote from Sergei Troizky

How do you connect to the remote site?

Is it possible their firewall is open only for certain PCs (e.g. by Mac address)?

No, we are on-site, connecting directly to Port 1 or Port 2 on the robot. Our IT Dept is back at our office, which is making it hard to to diagnose this issue, since we can't replicate it at home.

Quote from mortoch

Your IT should be able to get a wormhole through the remote companies firewall and access the offending computer.

There is no internet connectivity on site.

Quote from kwakisaki

Can you VM clone one of your working junkers to an external HD, then try running that from your colleague's machine - would possibly prove/disprove the physical hardware aspect.

Trying a VM is on the to-do list, but we're getting bulldozed by schedule pressure here.

Quote from mortoch

Is there any trusted computing settings turned on in his bios that is not turned on in yours?

Hard to say. There's been no time to try going through the BIOS settings line-by-line, and the two computers are such different make&models that I'm not sure an apples-to-apples comparison is possible.