My main PC can't get an IP

[ProdigyMS]

Hey all,

So yesterday I cam home from school and booted up my main rig and I didn't have an internet connection. Windows was giving me a 169. IP, which I need my 192. All the other PC's work fine, its just this one. And I'm not even sure how it happened, yesterday morning I turned it on and played some games online before school, powered it off, no problem. I've tried everything I could think of to fix it, switched out cables, made a direct connection with my modem, used another ethernet card (Have a DFI board, 2 build in ethernet ports), I've messed around with the Internet Protocol settings, which were always at auto before. There is no red x on the connection icon, and after trying all this I think it's my ISP. But using a switch with basically a built in router I would think that if they rejected one PC, they would have to reject them all because they will only be seeing one IP. I really don't want to format yet, wanting to buy another hard drive for RAID 0. Any ideas or suggestions? I will try to call my ISP tech support again, but they're kinda dumb and won't know what to do. Thanks

 

[TC10284]

This sounds more like a router issue on your end than an ISP issue and since your other PCs can get an IP and work properly on the Internet.

You've tried different cables, did you try connecting with the other Ethernet port? If so, did it give you another Windows Automatic Private IP address?
If it worked on the other network card, then it is an issue with your main card.
When you connected directly to your cable/dsl modem, did you power cycle the modem and then did you get an IP address from the modem?

You may want to try setting the problematic network card with a static IP address to see if it can still communicate with the router without worrying about DHCP in the first place. Give it an IP that's not in your router's DHCP range, ie - if your router's DHCP range is 192.168.1.100 to 192.168.1.254, set it to 192.168.1.2 (just not 192.168.1.1 because that's most likely the IP of the router or also called the gateway IP address). You most likely have a default class C subnet of 255.255.255.0. You don't really need to worry about giving an IP of a DNS server just to see if you can ping to the router. But, in most cases you can also set it to 192.168.1.1.

If you still cannot ping the router or get on any website, then that network card is either having a hardware issue or a driver issue. In that case, first try unisntalling the network card driver from Device Manager and then either getting the latest version or just reinstalling your current driver version.

 

[ProdigyMS]

Well I've tried another ethernet port on my motherboard, and put in a Linksys ethernet expansion card, still no go. I can't ping the switch or my other PCs now, but earlier I was able to trasfer a file through, not sure what's up with it now. I've also tried switching the cables around on my switch incase if a port went bad on the switch, which has happened to my hub before, but still no go. I'll do another direct connection and powercycle the modem again. Also I updated my ethernet drivers for my DFI motherboard.

 

[TC10284]

So when you tried your other network card on your mobo and the Linksys network card, you still could not get an IP? I'm not sure how you can transfer a file through to another PC on your LAN if you are not getting IP from your DHCP server (besides the Windows Automatic Private IP addressing but still that's not in the same range of another PC on your LAN as long as they are getting another IP from your router's DHCP).
Can you ping your loopback address successfully (127.0.0.1)? That will test the protocol stack.

 

[riser]

Do you have a router in place? Or are you receiving 192. IPs from your ISP?

If you have the router in place handing out your own DHCP, then you have issues between either the cable, NIC, or TCP/IP stack.

If you're getting each computer's IP from your ISP, I wouldn't be surprised if they're not handing out an IP to that computer since you may not have an additional available IP.

 

[aspicer]

Do you have a router in place? Or are you receiving 192. IPs from your ISP?

If you have the router in place handing out your own DHCP, then you have issues between either the cable, NIC, or TCP/IP stack.

If you're getting each computer's IP from your ISP, I wouldn't be surprised if they're not handing out an IP to that computer since you may not have an additional available IP.

* That would be pretty rare... for an ISP to actually be giving out 192. IP Addresses. And even stranger for them to be stingy about it. On some cable modem systems they actually assign *real* Internet IP Addresses via DHCP, and if you wanted more than one typically you have to pay for each additional IP. Not too many users pay for that which is why most run a router or Windows XP ICS box in the middle.

Chances are something locally in his premises is assigning 192.168.x.x IP addresses. Either a modem/router or a Windows box running ICS.

He could run an XPwinsockfix utility and see if that will get it. Otherwise check for something else blocking DHCP.