On 29 Jan 2003, at 13:25, James Maki wrote:

> I have a small lan that is working with 3 computers. My wife "won" an old
> Toshiba laptop with absolutely no software or manuals. I would like be
> able to connect to the lan with this laptop to facilitate file transfers.
> I have the cable and pcmcia ethernet card. I installed the card and
> supposedly good drivers (downloaded from Driverguide.com). When I boot the
> laptop, it gives the message:
>
> This DHCP client was unable to obtain an IP network address from a DHCP
> server. Do you want to see future DHCP messages?
>
> It cannot see the rest of the network and the WinXP computer cannot see
> the laptop. Same workgroup name, different computer name. Installed
> TCP/IP, Netbeui, etc. on the laptop. I seem to remember that WinXP dropped
> Netbeui support. Is this my problem and is there a fix? Should I be
> looking elsewhere for the problems? TIA
>
> Jim
> [log in to unmask]

  The machine's TCP/IP protocol is configured to "obtain an address
automatically".  It does this by broadcasting a request for any nearby DHCP
server to tell it what address (and other parameters) to use.  It's not
hearing any answer.

  What I can't tell from your description is whether the problem is:

1.  You don't *have* a DHCP server on the network, and everything else is
configured statically -- if this is the case, you need to assign it an
address, etc, "by hand".

2.  You have something that will answer DHCP requests, but these are never
making it to the network because of some problem with the card or its driver
or similar.

  Can you clarify which is the problem?

David Gillett

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