Cisco Home Community

[Schabe]

Hi, I've got a strange issue with my router that's just popped up.  I have two laptops, both Dell, running wirelessly, with a desktop connected to the modem-and-router.  One of my laptops more or less suddenly decided it can't acquire an IP address from the network.  The other one, however, works just fine (using it to type this, in fact).

Because of this, I contacted Dell, who remotely checked the bad laptop and configurations and determined that it's not a problem with the wireless adapter.  Not only can I connect through the router with an ethernet cable, but when they turned the security off on the router via the router's admin interface, I could access the unsecured network wirelessly as normal.  I definitely don't want to run an unsecured network, though.

The router is a WRT54G (don't have the version number handy offhand), I run it at WPA-Personal with 128-bit encryption, and until now I haven't had any major issues with it.  I've power cycled the router, I've deleted and created new wireless connection profiles in Windows, and nothing is resolving the IP address issue.  The best Dell could tell me was to ask the ISP to "force DNS" (I confess I don't know what this means), but I'd like to keep my old settings, if possible.  Any ideas?

Message Edited by Schabe on 01-16-2008 09:26 PM

[vness]

If everything else is working fine on the router, logic tells me it has something to do with the laptop's settings. Have you already removed the all preferred networks and tried reconnecting to the wireless network?

[snikt]

If you have any firewalls enabled, either Microsoft's or a third-party, disable them temporarily. Make sure that the DHCP Client service is started and is set to  Automatic startup. Afterwards bring up a command prompt window and type ipconfig renew. This will attempt to contact the DHCP server, in this case your router, and request an IP address.

[voila]

I have the same problem, and I tried clear the preferred network list, release/renew the ip address from command line, "repair" the connection (by Windows); nothing works.

My Thinkpad X61 works flawlessly in school (campus wireless network), and even at home using another DSL wireless modem/router. I always have Kaspersky Internet Security in the X61 and it works flawlessly with the above mentioned wired or wireless. The X61 just cannot obtain ip address from any Linksys router I tried (WRT54G & WRT54GS, brandnew). However, it works okay using ethernet cable. I also tried different channels (1 through 11). One thing I must think is my home community is crammed with wireless networks, about ten of them in my Windows list. However, my X61 still works with my old DSL modem/router.

Hope someone can help or I need to return the routers and try another brand.

[vness]

You can try other channels (1, 6 or 11) and hope it doesn't mess up the working wireless computers. If all else fail, set a static ip address.

[Carrot]

Use static/manual Ip address to Dell Laptop ....

Reboot the computer .... see if it shows connected status or not ....

[Schabe]

Thank you all for your help.  I'll give the static IP address a shot and see if that corrects the issue. 

That said, I know the basics of creating the static connection, but I'm not sure on the following: Do I need to do this on both computers if I do it on one?  I don't want to create a problem on the one computer that isn't having any.

[picohat]

No, just set static IP adn other network info on the labtop that is not working. Run ipconfig /all on that working labtop, then copy down the IP, netmask, gateway and DNS servers info. After that set other unused IP on that problem labtop with same netmask, gateway and DNS servers info.

Good luck..


picoHat
Home Network, Wireless Network and Computer Networking Made Easy

[Carrot]

Provide static IP only on laptop with issues.It should be outside DHCP range of router. You can use like: IP: 192.168.1.10, subnet mask, 255.255.255.0, default gateway: 192.168.1.1, DNS1: 192.168.1.1, DNS2: 4.2.2.2