Cant acquire IP address in wireless network.

**riddellcomp** · November 2nd, 2005, 07:19 AM

Hello,
Im trying to setup a laptop onto an existing wireless network. It detects the network but says it has limited connectivity. If I do a repair it cannot acquire an IP adress.
The main pc is a desktop-XPsp2- with a wireless router connected via ethernet.
PC2 is a desktop-Xpsp2 with a wireless pci card and it connects to the network no problems and I can access the network.

The laptop is Xpsp2 with a Toshiba wireless lan mini pci card setup the same as pc 2 to obtain Ip address automatically etc but will not acquire an IP address.
DHCP is enabled in the router and gives an Ip address to pc 1 of 192.168.1.2 and pc 2 of 192.168.1.3.

Ive tried numerous repairs, disabled firewalls etc etc and removed the card from the device manager and then rebooted. The only thing I havent tried is using Toshiba drivers because Im having trouble trying to find them.

Does anyone have some other suggestions?

TIA>

**NooNoo** · November 2nd, 2005, 01:58 PM

Riddellcomp, you should have started your own thread... however...

What Toshiba?
What nics?
Wep?
WPA?
Mac filtering?

**riddellcomp** · November 2nd, 2005, 06:15 PM

Sorry I didnt realise I had posted this in another thread. I will start a new post.

**riddellcomp** · November 2nd, 2005, 06:16 PM

Hello,
Im trying to setup a laptop onto an existing wireless network. It detects the network but says it has limited connectivity. If I do a repair it cannot acquire an IP adress.
The main pc is a desktop-XPsp2- with a wireless router connected via ethernet.
PC2 is a desktop-Xpsp2 with a wireless pci card and it connects to the network no problems and I can access the network.

The laptop is Xpsp2 with a Toshiba wireless lan mini pci card setup the same as pc 2 to obtain Ip address automatically etc but will not acquire an IP address.
DHCP is enabled in the router and gives an Ip address to pc 1 of 192.168.1.2 and pc 2 of 192.168.1.3.

Ive tried numerous repairs, disabled firewalls etc etc and removed the card from the device manager and then rebooted. The only thing I havent tried is using Toshiba drivers because Im having trouble trying to find them.

Does anyone have some other suggestions?

TIA>

**riddellcomp** · November 2nd, 2005, 06:22 PM

Thanks Noo Noo too answer your question from the other thread.

Its a Toshiba Sattelitte Pro 4600
ALL security is off whilst I am getting this set up (And in all honesty where they live I doubt anyone else would even have a comoputer let alone a wireless connection)

The nic is a geniune Toshiba wireless lan mini pci card (It connects into a slot under a panel underneath the laptop). I think I may have found some drivers for it which I will try tonight after work.

Thanks for the help.

**sonofswift** · November 3rd, 2005, 03:01 AM

Make sure your virus software firewall is not blocking network access.

**NooNoo** · November 3rd, 2005, 04:12 AM

Split answers from other thread and merged with this....

toshiba 4600 wifi drivers ... use the 2k drivers.

**slgrieb** · November 3rd, 2005, 06:02 PM

Another thing to check if the Toshiba drivers don't help is the issue of signal quality. If the WLAN signal to the laptop is very weak, or the signal quality is poor, or both, the machine may be unable to acquire an IP address. Try running Network Stumbler http://www.netstumbler.com/downloads/ and check the results. Usually, in cases of marginal signal strength/quality you can clear the "limited connectivity" issue by setting an assigned IP address for the network adapter. Of course the connection is still likely to be painfully slow.

**riddellcomp** · November 5th, 2005, 11:10 AM

Thanks for the replies. Fors ome reason I didnt get any e-mail alerts so didnt realsie anyone had responded.

Anyway the firewalls and all av software is off.

The signal and connection strength is perfect as the laptop is within 2 metres from the router whilst I do all this.

The drivers I tried from Toshibas website were the wrong ones and didnt work.

Noo Noo thanks for the link to the drivers you have given me, I will give them a try tomorrow morning. There is one their that matches the type of wireless card we have.

**Guts3d** · November 7th, 2005, 07:15 AM

Also, you can try hitting " Start ", " Run ", and type " CMD " in the run box. A DOS box will pop up, type ipconfig /flushdns and hit enter, then type ipconfig /release then finally ipconfig /renew. This will allow you to see if you are getting an ip addy.

**riddellcomp** · November 7th, 2005, 08:49 AM

Well Im not sure why it works now but it does. Here is what I did in order.

1. Tried umpteen different drivers from the Toshiba website for the Sattelite Pro 4600 but none worked.
2. Phoned the store the card was brought from and they phoned Toshiba and were told we had to use the drivers from the Tecra m1 laptop. (How stupid of us not to know that, why dont Toshiba just rename that driver and put it under the Pro 4600 driver section?
3. It still wouldnt connect so I brought the laptop back to my house and it detected my wireless network but wouldnt connect.
4. I disabled the Windows wireless zero config in Services and used the app which came with the new drivers. (Which I found by accident I might add)
5. This worked and I had a good connection with Internet access. DHCP is enabled on my router and the laptop had an address of 192.168.0.7
6. I took the laptop back to my mates house, set up the wireless config to match his network and it connected but with no internet access. In the end I had to manually set his IP address to 192.168.1.7 and a DNS server address of 192.168.1. (The router)
DHCP on the router was DISABLED for this to work.

This is where I am lost. We had another computer on this network set to obtain IP automatically and DHCP turned on in the router. It worked fine and the second pc was able to connect to the network and had internet access.
The laptop could connect to my own network with DHCP turned on and it was given an ip address of 192.168.0.7 and worked fine. But why cant the laptop connect to my mates network and obtain an ip address automatically like it should? After disabling dhcp on the router the other pc was still able to connect to the network, although I later realised that once the ip address was released it wouldnt be able to obtain a new one, until we manually set it like the laptop.
Can anyone explain this bizarre behaviour?

**NooNoo** · November 7th, 2005, 12:14 PM

You mean why dhcp didn't take on the 4600?
Could be a number of reasons, dropped packets when it requests, corrupt tcp stack, spyware mucking with winsock connections...
Or, the ip range you were using... did you set the gateway when you had it set to get an ip from dhcp?

**riddellcomp** · November 7th, 2005, 05:39 PM

Originally Posted by NooNoo

You mean why dhcp didn't take on the 4600?
Could be a number of reasons, dropped packets when it requests, corrupt tcp stack, spyware mucking with winsock connections...
Or, the ip range you were using... did you set the gateway when you had it set to get an ip from dhcp?

NO I did not set the gateway.

If what you say above could be the reason it wouldnt work, I still cant work out why it worked using DHCP on my network no probs, (Which ruled out problems with the laptop) And also why the second PC works using dhcp on his network, which kind of rules out the router having problems. Its as if only the combination of the 4600 and his router that is causing problems.
What do you think?