On 22 Dec 2006 at 21:40, Maurice Reid wrote:

> I have been having a myriad of problems with this world, but my most
> pressing one is connecting my Dell laptop with the Internet. I have
> attempted to connect in various wi-fi hotspots in hotels, airports and
> even on a relatives wireless network. I can readily connect with the
> SSID, and the "status" shows excellent signal strength, but I
> continually get the message, (after a lengthy attempt to connect by my
> laptop) "This connection has limited or no connectivity. You might not
> be able to access the Internet or some network resources. For more
> information, click this message". 

> It then tells me that " this problem occurred because the network did
> not assign a network address to the computer." I ran "ipconfig" get the
> IP address info, ping it and it's fine. 

  Ping *WHAT*?  ipconfig will show you several addresses, at least one of 
which is your own computer and will be pingable under almost ANY conditions. 
A better test is to ping the "default gateway" address.

  If you're showing excellent signal strength, but not gettind an assigned 
address, Windows may be giving you one which isn't really usable.  So the 
key question is:  Why aren't you getting an assigned address?  (That has to 
happen before any web login...)
  There are four ways that getting an address can fail:

1.  No connection -- you report excellent signal strength.

2.  No DHCP server -- you report that others get on okay.

3.  No DHCP client service -- you report that wired connections work.

4.  DHCP server rejected or ignored your request.

  About the only thing that could be different in your requests from your 
neighbors is the wireless NIC's MAC address.  Some software might be 
overriding the default hardware value, and not all possible values are 
legally valid.

  It might be useful if you could collect the output from "ipconfig /all" 
(redirect it to a text file) while the machine is in this state, and paste 
it into an email back here.  There might be some important clues there.

> Laptop is Dell Inspirion B130 with Intel PRO/Wireless 2915ABG Network
> Connection, 

  I'm on a list of people administering WiFi networks at colleges and 
universities, and some have had issues getting the Intel 2915 chipset and/or 
drivers to work with some brands of access point.  But if that were your 
issue, I'd expect it would be working okay in at least some locations.

  Can you point me to some info about the LinkSys plugin you refer to?  The 
closest things to that I've seen are specific to LinkSys WiFi adapters, and 
simply won't find one in your laptop, so I think you must be refering to 
something I haven't encountered....

David Gillett

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