[seashell]

I am trying to dedicate a selected ip adress to my pc (winxp)
but I have no idea which DNS-Server adress I have to enter.

My problem: Upon startup WinXP takes about 60 seconds to get an ip-adress from my netgear router. During that, the taskbar freezes, resulting in different programmes (e.g. Antivir) not to load properly to the taskbar.
Therefore I want to select the ip manually. I have reserved that ip-adress in the router's menu and have entered the ip + subnetmask + gateway(router), what is missing is the DNS-Server. - What to enter there?

And do I have to unselect the router as DHCP-server? If I do, what for do I have to reserve the ip-adress of the pc then in the router menu? Makes no sense to me.

And while I am writing, I have another problem with the router: It is too fast.
Router and DSL-Modem are on one power source, when I switch them on, the router tries to send the internet connection data (username+password) before it is ready ( seems like it need some time to start). Result: no internetconnection established. I have to reset the router manually after a minute or so, and then it gets a connection when it started again. Any idea how to solve that?

[awatson]

For your DNS problem - try using the opendns DNS servers, I've had no problems with them - set your TCP/IP properties to use the IP you want, then use the IP addresses opendns specify on their website: 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220.