[kallhoff]

I have had wireless set up and working on my home system for more than a year. My laptop is configured to automatically switch between wired and wireless mode depending on whether I'm connected to an ethernet cable or not. I use comcast as my ISP, and have a netgear router. On Thursday (last week), I was working away connected wireless, when my network connection dropped. Tried to reconnect, and got the following message:

The DHCP server on this network failed to respond to the request your system made for automatic IP Address configuration.




I've tried everything I can think of to resolve this:
1. turned off and on the Comcast modem, disconnected the ethernet cable
2. reset the Netgear router
3. ran the /ipconfig release, renew, flush commands
4. unplugged everything from each other, (comcast, netgear), waited 30 seconds, re-connected everything

Nothing works. I'm currently connected via ethernet cable, so I know the connection is good, and this was after I flushed all the IP config information, so I know comcast served up a new IP via DHCP. It seems very strange to me that this happened out of the blue, while I was actually connected via wireless.. Any suggestions?

Thanks!
Kathleen

[bearone2]

cable or dsl.

onboard wireless or pcmcia card, either could have failed as well as the wireless part of the router.

make sure encryption on the card/router is the same.

i had to restore a dell laptop yesterday and had to setup the card/encryption.

settings/control panel/system/hardware/device manager, any yellow exclamation point witrh the wireless adapter?

[kallhoff]

Laptop is an IBM T40 thinkpad
ISP connection is via comcast cable.
Onboard integrated wireless - It's an Intel Pro/Wireless Lan 2100 3B mini PCI adapter

What diagnostics can I run to see if the wireless card went bad? Or if the router failed?

Thank you!

[JohnWill]

When you scan for wireless networks, do you see your network? If so, have you tried removing the configuration and reconnecting, including entering the encryption key?

[bearone2]

when you did the off/on/reset thingy, did you reconfigure the router, as resetting may take it back to default settings.

if you can, try another wireless laptop and see if it acquires the signal.
if the wireless router was configured with encryption, get into the wireless card on the 2nd laptop and setup encyption the same and see if you can connect.

if you don't get a wireless signal on the 2nd computer, the router is misconfigured or bad.

[kallhoff]

Yes, when I scan for wireless networks, I see my network.

My laptop is configured with software from IBM called IBM Access Connections. It's a user friendly way to configure network information and create different 'location profiles'. I did try creating a new profile, by copying the one I have set up for this wireless network, but that failed in the same manner.

I'll try creating a brand new one, and will post the results in a few minutes.

[bearone2]

are you using encryption?

[kallhoff]

Yes, I'm using encryption - WPA-PSK /TKIP.

I just tried creating a new profile, entering all the data vs copying an existing profile.
Nada - fails the same way - waiting for an IP address to be served by the DHCP server.

My daughter is bringing her laptop over - we'll try with hers. She's configured to use this wireless network already, so that will at least narrow it down a little further.

I'm sorry, bearone2, I'm missed your post where you asked "when you did the off/on/reset thingy, did you reconfigure the router, as resetting may take it back to default settings."

I only unplugged the wireless router. I didn't do any explicit reset action (unless unplugging it will also reset it?)

What is so strange about this is that it just stopped working in the middle of an active 'wireless' connected state.
That's why I don't think any of the security, encryption settings, etc have changed between my laptop and the router.

[bearone2]

#2 in the original post said you reset the router.

[kallhoff]

oops.. you're right.. I did say that I reset the Netgear Router. sorry about that. I only unplugged it from the power, and from the wired ethernet going to the comcast cable router.
I did not do any 'explicit' reset action, unless unplugging it also resets it? That doesn't make much sense. It's a netgear WGR614 v6 router.

I'm trying to login to the router to check the settings, and the userid/password combo I have in my notes from when I set this up no longer works.

So now what?

[invalidusername]

Hi,

If you do not mind, I like to participate in this as much as I can. If not, then I would go away.

Did you by any chance choose a different wireless channel for your router? If not, go ahead and change the channlel to something different (i.e. from 6 to 11).

[kallhoff]

I didn't change anything. As I stated before, the wireless connection just dropped, in the middle of an active session, and it won't connect again. I changed nothing. This is why I think it must be some kind of router failure, or a comcast problem (ISP) or something like that.

I should mention that I'm currently working on the same laptop that I'm unable to connect with via wireless. My system is currently configured with the ethernet cable from the Comcast modem connected to the netgear router, and then the ethernet cable from the netgear router is physically connected to my laptop. This works, with respect to an active ethernet connection.

[invalidusername]

what I mean is go ahead and choose a differet wireless channel from what you have now and see if that changes anything.

[Dezaras]

can you log into the router when its connected via ethernet like it is now?

[invalidusername]

Yes, as stated above, get into the router with the other computer. Change to a differet channel. Have your laptop 10 feet away from the router, then try to connect wirelessly.