I have a home network with a wireless router, which I can access through two laptops. One uses a Linksys card and works ok, the other uses a built in card (Dell Latitude D620), thsi used to work until last Friday, now all it ever reports is 'aquiring network address'. The other laptop still connects ok. Can anyone help?
thanks, I checked that, the network is detected, full strength signal but it just stays at 'scquiring network address', tomorrow I can see if it will connect to the wireless at work
Well, hanging on "aquiring network address" means that the router's DHCP isn't successfully getting IP's from the router.
This should certainly be easily fixable, but you didn't really give enough information for anyone to on than guess at a few of the most common reasons why its not pulling IP's.
(I'm going to assume that you are using DHCP from the router and not assigning static IP's, since this the default and most common setup.)
To start off with, are you using encryption (WPA, WEP, etc)? If so, my first guess would be that the problem laptop somehow lost it's key. Try re-entering the key. If that still doesn't work, you may want to temporarily turn encryption off on the router and the problem laptop to eliminate one variable so you can T/S further.
Going further, ensure that DHCP is turned on with the router (assuming you are using DHCP again) and has an IP table range to accommodate everything that connects to router, look at MAC filtering on router (MAC filtering doesn't buy you extra "security", but if you are using it then make sure that this problem laptop's wireless MAC addy is in the table), check the TCP/IP properties on the problem laptop's wireless card ("Obtain an IP/DNS Address Automatically")...
Once it is talking again, bring your encryption back up into the loop...
If it was turned off, it wouldn't get as far as "Aquiring Network Address".
"Aquiring Network Address" means that the wireless connection has been established.
If it was turned off, there would've been some variant as "Service not available" when a connection was attempted. Actually, since the wireless is built-in to the laptop and probably using it's own custom OEM client software, it likely would've been in even more clearer English: "Wireless turned off.". I've seen some of the newer laptops with built-in wireless that are even more transparant: when wireless is turned off, the client program isn't even visable on the tray and when you attempt to run it from menu or command line, it informs you that the wireless is turned off.
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