Must renew IP address?

I’m using Windows XP, connected to my university’s LAN through ethernet.

This error message appeared:

The ITS around here doesn’t really attempt to answer e-mail inquiries; they prefer that you haul your entire system to their office.

Anyway, I tried “ipconfig /release” and “ipconfig /renew.” The first command seems to do what it is supposed to, but the second one has the same result as choosing the Repair option in Network Connections.

In the Local Area Network activity status, “bytes received” is always a much larger figure than “bytes sent” – 950,000 to 24,000 for example. I don’t know whether it should, but having Norton Firewall on or off makes no difference in this transmission rate.

Other specifics:
LAN Status
Address Type: Automatic Private Address
IP Address: 169.254.225.3
Subnet Mask: 255.255.0.0
Default Gateway: —

System Restore has solved problems in the past, but not this time. Can anyone help?

What was the text the command line “ipconfig /renew” gave? It’s usually a bit more descriptive in what caused the failure (or at least, gives a wider variety of incomprehensible ones).

That IP address isn’t going to get you anyplace. If you’re sure your network cable is good, and that the DHCP server on the network should be giving you an IP, then you may want to take a look at resetting winsock.

If you’ve got SP2, you can reset winsock at the command line by typing “netsh winsock reset”. (IIRC. It’s been a while).

I wrote it down but forgot to bring it with me. It was something about being unable to contact the DHCP server. And then it said IP renewal timed out.

I’m going to try the winsock reset now.

Thanks for your help, Nanoda, but it’s working now.

I think it was resetting that TCP/IP stack that did it. I don’t know. I found a list of netsh commands and tried them all.

Your computer is running something called DHCP. This means that the computer gets assigned an IP address by another computer, the DHCP server, for a certain duration. This duration is known as a lease. Part-way through the lease (exact time can vary), the computer will try to extend the lease by re-registering itself with the DHCP server. Your computer has tried to do so and failed.

For a network card, a user with user level privs under XP can release an IP address but not renew it, but a reboot cures that problem.

See RFC 2131 and RFC 2132 for full details.