Strange DHCP problem affects only one of four machines

[Jason Warren]

One of four machines on a home wired/wireless LAN is experiencing a
strange problem. It is an XP Home SP3 system with a wireless LAN
adapter. When the machine starts up it frequently is not able to
establish a network connection without a lot of human intervention. In
the System Event log I see a long string of pairs of an Info message
that records successful DHCP negotiation for an IP address followed
immediately by a Warning event notifying that the system was unable to
acquire an IP address via DHCP. This is repeated every five seconds. If
I manually disable/enable the connection it will usually work, although
if the machine is idle for more than a few minutes it frequently loses
the connection and the cycle begins again. Other wireless clients
running XP Home, XP Pro and Vista work fine. Any idea what could cause
this?

Thanks.

Jason

 

[Unknown]

Reposition the antenna.

 

[Jason Warren]

Reposition the antenna.

I don't think that's the problem. The machine is quite close to the
router and reports 90% signal strength. I could indict 2.4GHz cordless
phones, but the problem occurs when they're not in use and no other
machines are affected, even those farther from the router.

 

[Unknown]

Try repositioning the antenna away from monitors and other noise producing
devices.

 

[Unknown]

Try removing the phones anyway.

I don't think that's the problem. The machine is quite close to the
router and reports 90% signal strength. I could indict 2.4GHz cordless
phones, but the problem occurs when they're not in use and no other
machines are affected, even those farther from the router.