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Vista Home cannot obtain IP Address 1

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exel2000

IS-IT--Management
May 31, 2006
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Hello, for some reason, Vista Home will not obtain an IP address from our Windows 2003 DHCP server. The business edition works fine. The only information I can find is specific to non-MS DHCP servers and I tried adding the registry entry it mentioned anyways just for kicks. This applies to wired or wireless connections. Has anyone seen anything similar and been able to correct it? Other than assigning a static IP anyways? Thanx!
 
Is it only just one Home Premium machine or are you having problems with several Home Premium machines?

Have you tried booting the machine to "Safe Mode with Networking", or using the "Netsh Winsock Reset" command, just to see if it makes any difference?

 
Without actually knowing anything about the problem...
Sounds a little like a Home version restrictions towards a domain although getting an IP-Address shouldn't be a problem at all, but there might be some policies on the server or client-side that prevents giving an IP ?
Does Home support IPv6 ?

It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious.
Murphy's Laws
 
Thanks for the replies! This occurs on any and all Vista Home machines that we have tried on our network. The users all report that they work fine at other locations. I believe Home does support IPv6 but we're not using it yet. I have not yet tried safe mode with networking or the netsh winsock reset command, but I'm guessing it won't make a difference. Also, these machines are not being added to the domain, all they needs is internet access.
Our DHCP server is Windows 2003 server with no strange settings that I know of. Business Edition works normally and is able to retreive an IP address. Thanks!
 
I had a similar problem with wireless connecting through an access point ... two separate vista machines, same problem ... until I tried manually adding a gateway under the IPv4 configuration ... then it seemed to work.

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I'll give that a try the next time we get our hands on a Vista home machine. Part of the problem is we don't have any copies with Vista home on it to troubleshoot, we have to wait unitl a student comes in with one! Suppose I could buy a copy, but oh well.....
 
Okay, although I've sort of "solved" this problem, I still can't figure out why it WAS a problem in the first place:

I was setting up a Vista machine at home (running Vista Home Premium) and wanted to use my existing wireless network. My wireless configuration is using a Netgear wireless router configured as an access point to a regular wired router. The Vista machine was able to find the wireless network with no problems, but only for local access ... it would not get out to the internet.

I compared my wireless settings on the Vista machine with the settings on my XP Home wireless, and they appeared basically identical. However, the only way I could get the Vista machine to reach the internet was to add a default gateway (the IP address of my wired router) ... once this was done, and I restarted, I was able to operate fully under wireless.

My question / confusion has to do with why this is necessary when it isn't required on the XP machine.

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance for your assistance.


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Hmmm, I don't think ours would even work on the local network as it would just keep trying to communicate with the DHCP server. But I'll try adding the gateway next time and see what happens. Will adding the gateway address affect the access to other networks though?
 
exel2000 - that's a good question ... I will have to test that as well (although my suspicion is that it should work with other networks).

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okay - a follow-up to my previous post. Now the Vista machine won't connect (except a "local" connection) to the wireless. it sees my wireless access point and connects, but won't get past that to my internet (wired router).

now I'm stumped.

BTW, I've spent a combined total of 2+ hours on the phone with Dell tech support and got nowhere.

Anyone with ideas?

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I have seen similar problems with my HP Vista Home Premium ..
it seems that the problem revolves around the Nvidia Network on board system .. the Nvidia NIC would work sporadically and then stopped completely .. on it's own say to a printer it was fine ..
The short of it is .. got me a seperate NIC card plugged it in and no more problems ....
From my readings on various boards it seems the Nvidia problem has existed for many years without real solution by them
wolf
 
My Vista Machine will run online for twenty minutes or so then blink out and ask for a "Broadband Service Provider" password? What could this be?
 
What is showing in your Event Viewer, if anything?

How long has this been happening? What does your "Broadband Service Provider" have to say on the matter? Is the fault at their end? More details might help, also you might get a better response if you start a new thread if your problem is not linked to the original poster's topic? You will find it easier to keep tabs on it if is filed under your Handle and Thread Title.
 
This issue continues to drive us insane, so we've broken down and bought a copy of Vista home to see what the deal is. Then I may end up calling Microsoft....
 
Have a look at the link I mentioned in this semi-similar post.

Ethernet Connection; Unidentified, Local Only...
thread1583-1374950
 
One more follow-up:

If anyone out there can tell me if this makes sense, that would be great ... this is my suspicion:

First, let me start off by saying my problem is solved and my Vista Home Premium wireless laptop is connecting flawlessly. I checked with a network engineer and he sort of agreed with my theory ...

It seems Windows Vista had no problem identifying that it was connecting to my home network through my Netgear wireless router. What it DIDN'T realize was that my wireless router was re-configured as an access point only thru my wired router. Apparently, Vista was trying to obtain it's IP address thru the wireless device when, in fact, it should have been recognized a gateway configured in the wireless router and no DHCP. Once I removed the wired router and reset the wireless router as the primary router providing DHCP, the connections worked fine.

Anyone interested in a used Belkin wired router? LOL

So, for now, problem solved.

One more question - I've been reading horror stories about the Netgear WGT624 Wireless Router ... I've had mine for a couple of years and it "seems" to be working okay (although I did lose the wireless access last night) ...any comments / thoughts on this?

Regards - M

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Hmmm, that's interesting, but we seem to have this issue even on wired connections as well. I do plan on enabling DHCP on a wireless access point the next time to test that though.
 
Ok, have some more information. After doing some testing, we can get connected if we enter in the gateway address AND a DNS server address. This of course is a useless fix since this would affect their access to other wireless networks.
 
If it's on a Dell box check for an application that allows the NIC to shut off to save power. Turn that feature off or uninstall it. We had to fight with Dell to get them to tell us what that application was so I could uninstall it. It can turn the power saving feature backon with out notice.
We had a bunch of Dell laptops that would loose connectivity with the Network at random intervals, reguardless of how busy the connection was.
This would mess with getting DHCP information all the time.
The worst part is every once and a while it would cause the OS to forget it was part of a Domain.

Stance
 
I'll check on that on the Dell machines but this has been happening on HP's, Dell's, Sony's, Toshibas, you name it. I did end up setting up another access point (Apple Airport Extreme) and had it assigning IP addresses, and that works, but it still will not work using the Windows 2003 server DHCP server.
 
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