Hi. My home wireless connection has been working fine for about a year then a week or so ago one PC in the house wouldn't connect, the other three would. After messing with the settings re-inputting the network key fixed it. Now it has stopped again. The PC will see all the available networks in the local area including mine, and the three other PC's all work fine. When trying to connect to the Router if fails to acquire a network address. The Router is set to DHCP and the PC is set to automatically acquire an address as are all the other PC's. I tried manually setting the PC's IP in the range set in the Router and although the connection icon in the system tray then shows a connection, it won't connect to the Internet. However, with it set manually it lets me access the Router which is won't set to automatic. An ipconfig when set to automatically get the IP gives 169.254.145.42 and 255.255.0.0 which doesn't match anything in the Router. I've even tried re-installing the network card even though it didn't appear to be anything to do with this. Any help would be appreciated.

I could be that your network card went bad. That IP shows that you didn't set it properly or that the card isn't working. To set a static IP, go to the properties of the LAN and the properties of TCP/IP. Pick an IP out of the DHCP range. Personally, I don't like DHCP for small networks, especially with a wireless router. They are way to easy to compromise.

When I have a static address set on the NIC in the PC it accesses the Wireless Router fine, but not the Internet. If I set the NIC to auto then it won't even connect to the Router. I've re-installed the card and drivers, and the Belkin utility sees all the networks around me so in addition to the above this suggests that the card is ok.

When you set the static IP, set the DNS entries too. Your ISP will have their name servers listed.