Home Network Probs - DHCP issues
 

Hi all,
We've just added a third XP computer to our home wifi network (Belkin 54g AP and Origo router/adsl modem)

I've run the XP Network setup wizard and the new laptop is able to access connect to the wifi network but I'm having internet access problems and problems with folder sharing.

If I do ipconfig -all on the working machines it looks like this (10.0.0.2 is my adsl modem)

Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes
IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : 10.0.0.6
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.0.0.0
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 10.0.0.2
DHCP Server . . . . . . . . . . . : 10.0.0.2
DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : 10.0.0.2
Lease Obtained. . . . . . . . . . : 24 November 2004 09:00:10
Lease Expires . . . . . . . . . . : 03 December 2004 06:50:57

The new laptop says..

Connection-Specific DNS Suffix:
Physical Address: (MAC ADDRESS HERE)
DHCP enabled: YES
Autoconfig Enabled:YES
Autoconfig IP Address: 169.254.26.46
Subnet Mask: 255.255.0.0
Default Gateway:

I'm no network expert (obviously!) but all the TC/IP properties look to be the same (ie do it automatically) - what can I do to get them all working together?

many thanks
ian

Well you have two different subnet masks, so that could be causing the problem. Try making them the same and see if that works.

I'd spotted that - but how do I change it whilst keeping DHCP working?

The subnet masks are set by DHCP, the reason they are different is because the second machine has failed to get DHCP from the router, so Windows plucks out a random address from 169.254.*.* / 255.255.0.0 The reason for this is that you can string a bunch of unconfigured machines together and they'll network

Do you have any security on your wireless network? A properly setup wireless network should be blocking your laptop unti you
a) Provide the WEP key to the laptop, and
b) Inform the access point (router in your case) of the Physical Address of the laptop

Check those and see if it helps.

Ian,

i have the same setup as you. If you are using the Origo router/modem as the DHCP server you can assign a pool of IP address that it will use. You can also set the subnet from this too. Make sure your laptop has use DHCP ticked under the TCP/IP properties, and that all the units are in the same workgroup. If you continue to have problems I can do some screen dumps for you when I get home to help out.

Rich

Hi guys,
Thanks so far!
Lum - the laptop seems to be correctly set up with my Belkin 54g access point through WEP and MAC filtering - I can see the shared folders in Network Places, just get told I can't access them. I'm also unable to ping the Origo ADSL modem/router.

Rich - some screenshots would be v handy - seems to be a good peice of kit with shockingly bad user interface! The laptop is set to use DHCP BTW.

Ok, turn off DHCP on the new laptop and manually set the IP, subnet, gateway and DNS that are the same as the values you're expecting.
Then see if networking works as you would expect, both internet and between your computers.
That will confirm if it's actually a DHCP problem or a wider problem.

You will not be able to ping or access shared folders while your laptop is on a 169.254 address, but if you set it to a 10.0.0 address and still can't ping then you're not even on the wireless LAN properly.

I just deleted the network bridge network connection on the laptop - restarted and now it's found the DHCP server, subnet is correct and file sharing works - all this with no network bridge.

I have no idea why this solved the problem - but (touch wood) it seems to be sorted.

Big thanks guys!