Member Avatar for boherb

I have a home network with an ATT router and maybe 10 devices on it. One device, a dell latitude laptop running Windows XP is the issue here. This PC has always connected to the wireless network just fine, but today will not. I have worked with ATT, no help at all, but have gathered the following.

  • my laptop IP address is 169.254.xxx.xx. This IP address does not change when I reboot, and does not change when I do ipconfig/releanse, or renew, or when I do a dnsflush. (I dont know what these are, the ATT guys had me do them).
  • the router is not seeing this IP address. It assignes 192. ip addrsses to all other devices. I am almost sure that used to be the ip range for this laptop as well.

To a layperson, it seems that the router cannot assign an ip to this laptop, and does not recognize the one it has.

  • when I open network connections, it says signal strength excellent, but also "limited or no connectivity". The message also says "This problem occurred because the network did not assign a network address to the computer".

  • Yesterday, I did a ccleaner where I deleted a couple of programs (an ATT toolbar, a printer software thing, and I think that is it, but I must have done something to cause this laptop to suddenly not connect after 9 months of flawless performance.

  • I did a system restore to take me to a state before I did the ccleaner, but I dont think that helps with removed programs (if that is even the issue). I have also looked in my recycle hoping to find something there to reinstall, but nothing.

I am sorry if this is poorly worded. I am not a technical person, and am at a loss. Att said to take it to Office Depot. I am hoping someone here might have better advice, and can get me out of a mess I am sure I created.

Thank you for any responses.

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by vbalag

Dani AI

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As and pointed out, the 169.254.x.x address indicates Windows never obtained a DHCP lease from the router. Their suggestions (a temporary static address, uninstalling the wireless adapter, and resetting the TCP/IP stack) are sensible first steps. What follows fills gaps in those answers with focused diagnostics to determine whether the problem is the laptop (OS/drivers/firewall/radio) or the router/DHCP service.

Useful diagnostics that quickly isolate the fault:

  • Test with a wired Ethernet cable: if the laptop gets a 192.x address over cable, the router’s DHCP is working and the problem is in the laptop’s wireless layer (driver, wireless radio switch, profile, or firewall). If the laptop still does not get a DHCP address, inspect the router’s DHCP client list, lease pool size and any MAC-filter/block lists.
  • On the XP laptop check that IPv4 is set to obtain address/DNS automatically (adapter Properties → Internet Protocol), and remove the saved wireless network profile before reconnecting (old profiles can hold bad settings).
  • Verify the laptop’s wireless radio is enabled (physical switch or Fn+Fn-key), and confirm XP services for DHCP Client and Wireless Zero Configuration are running and set to Automatic.
  • Boot once into Safe Mode with Networking (third‑party firewalls/managers are disabled there) to see whether a security suite or wireless utility is blocking DHCP.

Concise fixes to try (do these after the diagnostics above): run a Winsock reset and then reboot:

netsh winsock reset

After reboot, if the wireless adapter was removed in Device Manager, reinstall the adapter driver using the driver package downloaded from Dell’s support site for that Latitude model (use the Service Tag if available). If Safe Mode restores connectivity, remove or reinstall the third‑party firewall/connection manager.

If wired works but wireless still fails, suspect the wireless driver/hardware; test with a USB Wi‑Fi adapter or a Linux Live USB to confirm hardware. If neither wired nor wireless can get a DHCP lease, reboot the router, check its DHCP range/leases and MAC filtering, and if necessary contact the router/ISP support with the router’s DHCP status and the laptop’s hardware (MAC) address for further investigation.

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Member Avatar for JorgeM

You are on track with your analysis. The 169.254.x.x address is an APIPA address. Without getting into the technical details, a Windows system will self assign itself an ip in this range when it is unable to negotiate an address with your router.

You could try applying a static ip address to see if that works for the time being. Here is a video tutorial I have on YouTube regarding TCP/IP configuration on XP. The concept is the same for other Win versions.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_drzbZcJSc

You may be able to resolve this by uninstalling the network adapter in device manager and letting windows rescan and reinstall it. This procedure fixes flaky issue.

Member Avatar for vbalag
  1. try with static ip first and c if it works,
  2. put the lan into auto ip mode and then you can reset the ip of the pc with
    netsh int ip reset c:\resetlog.txt command in cmd prompt with admin rights. unplug and plug in the lan cable from the pc

Hope this helps

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