DHCP help needed urgently please

I have to leave here soon, but I am baffled by the following:

Laptop with wireless connection lost its IP addy, and ipconfig/release + ipconfig/renew just leaves 0.0.0.0 etc since I'd just released it. It times out saying that the DHCP server cannot be found/contacted (whatever).

The ADSL Router currently has 3 connections showing, the other two are fine (although they are NOT wireless), and the router iforms me that the laptop IS on the list of computers connected, and that it's allocated a normal IP address (192.168.1.67) Just for a bit of icing on the cake, I noticed that it's IP sits between the other two, which end in 66 and 68.

The laptop wireless software (Netgear, for an 11g 108Mbs) informs me that the connection to the router is okish, at about 50%, and everything is normal. Windows XP informs me that the wireless connection is ok, but some things may not work properly. I tried it's "Auto fix it" button, which inevitably does the same as I was doing in CMD, and it gave me the same reponse, albeit in different words.

Everything was fine, it's just that the internet suddenly died, adn doesn't come back. (reboot just gives standard locally assigned IP settings since the DHCP server cannot be reached. He was "surfing the web normal stuff" (Teenage boy...)

The laptop cannot access the router via IE, and a ping to it just reveals "Host unreachable"

Dell inspiron 8500, XP home, AVG and AntiVir, Ad-aware PE, Netgear wireless 108Mb PCMCIA card, HG 1800 BT ADSL router.


I'm sure there's something simple I've missed, any ideas folks, please? I'm lost.

 

perhaps you could set the ip's statically

 

Do you have encryption on your router? An invalid encryption key will give symptoms similar to this.
Have you disabled all firewalls (including the Windows one) and attempted to connect again?
Are you running SP2? SP2 has a habit of not being able to receive DHCP addresses correctly at times. Read: http://www.pchell.com/support/limitedconnectivity.shtml.
Have you recreated the wireless connection profile in the software?
Have you tried to reinstall your wireless card?

These things may help. However, this sounds like it's possibly an issue with the DHCP lease (seeing as how your router lists your PC as connected with an IP address...make sure this page isn't cached!!). Have you power cycled your router and attempted to connect via wireless, again?

If still no luck, uninstall all of the Netgear software and the drivers for the card. For best results physically remove it from the system, too. After this, only install the drivers for the NIC and try to connect using the Windows XP wireless configuration utility.

 

Thanks for the help guys,

It doesn't have encryption and static ips didn't help - unfortunately!
The router was difficult to access, especially since it was otherwise working. But a power rcycle on that did the trick!
Cheers!
N.

 

If it's 2.4 wireless, then cordless phones nearby could interfere. Just a thought, is it a possibility in your case?