Network Card will not hold an IP Address

[Tim Donahue]

I have a Dell Inspiron with Windows XP on it. When I try and connect
the computer to my network, the network card (or any of the spare
network cards we have laying around) will not take an IP address. This
problem exists when I am trying to assign the address through both
static and DHCP assignments. I can not find any advice for fixing this
problem on Google, so I figured I would try here before I format the
computer and rebuild it.

I have run Windows Repair to attempt to fix the problem, but it still
exists. Does anyone have any ideas to fix this short of formating the
hard drive and reinstalling?

Tim Donahue

 

[*Vanguard*]

Tim Donahue said in news:[email protected]:

I have a Dell Inspiron with Windows XP on it. When I try and connect
the computer to my network, the network card (or any of the spare
network cards we have laying around) will not take an IP address.
This problem exists when I am trying to assign the address through
both static and DHCP assignments. I can not find any advice for
fixing this problem on Google, so I figured I would try here before I
format the computer and rebuild it.

I have run Windows Repair to attempt to fix the problem, but it still
exists. Does anyone have any ideas to fix this short of formating the
hard drive and reinstalling?

Tim Donahue

Might someone else on your network have the same MAC address? It is
possible but not likely caused by hardware. There are some NICs that
are programmable to change their MAC address but not many users have
those. More likely is that someone configured the driver under Windows
to use a specific MAC address and which is the same as someone else's
(who already got an IP address for that MAC address). In Device Manager
(devmgmt.msc) for the NIC's properties under the Advanced tab, do any
hosts on your network have a non-blank Network Address field? This
software-based MAC address will override the MAC address burned in the
NIC. I presumed that there was no conflict shown in Device Manager
(i.e., no yellow circled exclamation mark) so that the TCP/IP protocol
can actually bind to your NIC.

 

[Tim Donahue]

Tim Donahue said in


Might someone else on your network have the same MAC address? It is
possible but not likely caused by hardware. There are some NICs that
are programmable to change their MAC address but not many users have
those. More likely is that someone configured the driver under Windows
to use a specific MAC address and which is the same as someone else's
(who already got an IP address for that MAC address).

I tried multiple NICs (1 of which had never been used in this computer,
but have been used in other computers as recently as last week), and
multiple networks. (WLAN, our internal network, and a crossover cable
between the builtin NIC and the PCMCIA NIC.) Any time I try and assign
the address to the NIC manually, when I run ipconfig all it reports is
0.0.0.0 or a blank space. I double checked that ICF and ICS are both
disabled, and nothing looks out of the ordinary on any of the
configuration pages in the advanced view for the NICs.

In Device Manager

(devmgmt.msc) for the NIC's properties under the Advanced tab, do any
hosts on your network have a non-blank Network Address field? This
software-based MAC address will override the MAC address burned in the
NIC. I presumed that there was no conflict shown in Device Manager
(i.e., no yellow circled exclamation mark) so that the TCP/IP protocol
can actually bind to your NIC.

This was one of the first things I checked. The is reported correctly
in Device Manager, and I have reinstalled the NIC to rule out a corrupt
driver was the problem. The user (the boss's daughter) had one or more
friends at school try to fix the computer for her thinking it was a
virus that had been running around the college's campus network. I
believe that this friend, while having good intentions, had no clue what
they were doing and made the problem much, much worse.

Tim Donahue

 

[Steve Nielsen]

I have a Dell Inspiron with Windows XP on it. When I try and connect
the computer to my network, the network card (or any of the spare
network cards we have laying around) will not take an IP address. This
problem exists when I am trying to assign the address through both
static and DHCP assignments. I can not find any advice for fixing this
problem on Google, so I figured I would try here before I format the
computer and rebuild it.

I have run Windows Repair to attempt to fix the problem, but it still
exists. Does anyone have any ideas to fix this short of formating the
hard drive and reinstalling?

Tim Donahue

Do you have other network devices including IR and wireless installed?
If so remove the Bridging adaptor driver.

Are the spare NICs the same as the original? If so re-install or update
the NIC driver.

If still no joy I'd remove TCP/IP restart then add it back.

Steve

 

[*Vanguard*]

Did you try to release any current IP lease(s) and renew them?

ipconfig /release *
ipconfig /flushdns
ipconfig /renew