Odd behavior with winxp pro

[uho 0]

It first started on my laptop for some reason

it cant get dhcp address sometimes reboot helps

sometimes not but still if i reboot into my linux

all works fine so it cant be hardware issue.

well i cna live with this but then all of sudden now one of my desktop machines refuses to take any dhcp address

and im 100% sure my router does give the ip and other info

as from same switch port or from same switch other port other windows desktops do get dhcp.

 

i also tuned my desktop machine behind direct bridge and took the ip from my works dhcp server that didnt work either but all other

windows xp desktops i have at home work flawlessly.

 

if i force the desktop into manual ethernet setup all works fine.

btw that odd ip address windows sometimes gives 169.x.x.x with mask 255.255.0.0 it only means dhcp server was not found and it gave some m$ ip to machine so that some services may still work even you have no rela network connectivity. not sure is it coz of loopback or similar issue so they decided in m$ that if we dont give it an ip after unsuccesful dhcp query it may break somehting so lets just give it one ip address from some random generated private network ip.

 

anyone else ever had this issue? all i found from net was

ppl talking about spyware or such thing i didnt find anything

with spybot nor adaware. and if it was malware in my tcp stack why would manual setting work still?

 

any clues?

thanks in advance, and sorry for my bad spelling etc

 

[mncoughlin 0]

First, the 169.xxx.xxx.xxx address is the MS way of showing you that even though you have 'get a ip address automatically' is on, the machine did not receive a response from the DHCP server. - Normal behavior.

 

Now, it could be that you nic card is not sending an arp broadcast request for an IP address. In that case, the DHCP server wouldn't even know you are there. This makes sense if you hard code an IP address.

 

The nic card is working with a hard coded IP but not with DHCP, I would first remove the stack/nic card from the machine through device manager and networks (my computer/properties and control panel). Reboot the system and let thm reload. Configure you IP stack as needed and see what happens.

 

If it still doesn't come up you may want to try getting another NIC and see if that works.

 

Goo Luck!