Hello I am trying to troubleshoot a friend of mines computer who for whatever reason hasnt been able to get on the web for a while..He uses a dial up connection to aol. i guess theres 2 problems really..The AOL problem goes like this: The modem dials out it connects to aol goes thru the routines then at like Step 4 i believe it produces an error message which i cant reproduce at the moment because the phone line is in use basically when its trying to talk to the network the error pops up . The second problem is when i tried to connect him to my LAN thru my router it doesnt connect thru DHCP..i have a broadband cable connection that normally links 2 computers in the house. i disconnected the other PC to hook his up to..After tons of troubleshooting using ipconfig...i try to release and renew and the automatic private address is all i get. I tried to set a static 192.168.1.X address with the router IP as the default gateway and then put it back to automatic...still when i try to release the automatic IP it stays and doesnt go to 0.0.0.0 or whatever...how do i get this machine back online?? FYI the connection is fine with the PC i disconnected. do u think its a NIC problem?..its an Onboard Nic. I just need some help. Thanks for your assistance :cheers: