Can't connect to DHCP - tried everything

[jamesfmuk]

Okay... My PC connects to the internet through a Netgear router, as does my Powerbook and iBook. All of a sudden, the PC stopped getting its IP address from the router's DHCP server - it kept getting that 169.x.x.x address instead. The two Macs connect fine. I thought it was my PC's ethernet card, so I bought a wireless card, installed it, and it did exactly the same thing - cannot connect to DHCP server.

I've tried Bill Castner's Winsock thing (and kind of feel like I know Bill, I've read his posts so much), tried reinstalling both cards, one card, the other card, rebooting, putting in manual tcp/ip addresses (still can't ping the router), ipconfig release and renew do nothing - I've even reinstalled Windows XP (Home) as an upgrade/repair thing, but it's still giving me the same grief.

I haven't installed or uninstalled anything recently - I used to have Norton AntiVirus, but uninstalled it about a year ago.

Please, for the sake of my sanity, can someone help?

 

[dk87]

Assuming you have checked the following:
1. Different port on the switch
2. Different cable
3. DHCP scope and available addresses on the router
4. Manual address is within the same scope as Powerbook and iBook.

Can you ping the Macs?
Do you have a software firewall installed?
Do you have something like McAfee's Privacy manager installed? (I have seen where it was installed and not running and prevented ALL traffic from leaving the nic).

 

[jamesfmuk]

Yep, have tried those 4 things - cannot ping the Macs, or even the router (even though it says I'm connected to it). No software firewall, and no McAfee or Norton stuff installed at all.

I'm going to have to add another hard drive, make this one a slave, and do a fresh format then install on the new master. With XP Pro, instead of Home, I think...

 

[PSYSMIC]

Does a reinstall rebuild the TCP/IP stack? or have you tried that?

Gateway set to your router?
Clear the arp cache?
No host file entires to 127.0.0.1?

 

[jamesfmuk]

Tried the TCP stack thing, tried setting the gateway to the router - what is the arp cache? Not sure what you mean abou the host file entries, how should I check that?

Thank you both for replying, by the way, I really appreciate it!

 

[LoopyLoo]

Try setting a manual address on the same subnet as the router. If that fails then your NIC is dead.

 

[jamesfmuk]

LoopyLoo, I've tried the manual address approach, but nothing doing. It connects to the router, just won't get an IP address from the DHCP server. Did the same thing with the ethernet card and the wireless card.

 

[CiscoGuy79]

have you looked for spyware?

 

[jamesfmuk]

Yep, did a full spyware sweep with Spybot and AdAware, and a full virus scan with AVG - I have now installed a new hard drive, made the original one a slave, and installed XP Pro on the new drive - internet connects no problem now. Apparently XP Home has "issues"... Even when it worked, sometimes it would assign me an IP address immediately, sometimes it took about 10 minutes - bizarre.

I find it staggering that this sort of thing can just happen, for no good reason - one of the many reasons why I intend to make the switch to Macs full time by the end of next year.

Thanks for all your help, everyone, looks like the best workaround is not to use XP Home at all.