I'm having this weird problem in windows lately with a few of my network cards. They are 3Com 3c509 with a few variations (some are combo, some are tp, etc.) When I connect it to my computer the lights from the hub and network card lights up. However, it cannot get an ip from DHCP (my adsl provides ip's). For some reason, there seems to be conflicting issues with the IRQ or I/O but it does not appear in Windows as an error (ie. no yellow "!"). The NIC works, but assigns itself 169.x.x.x IP's. When I change them to 192.168.0.x to match my internal network, it can't even ping ANY other computer! It's as if the NIC is not connected to the hub, but it is!! Help!! Any suggestions? I had the same problem with an IBM Etherjet ISA but I fixed it on my other computer. It appears that this computer doesn't have PnP support (but, get this, it does!) when I tried to run the diagnostic tools from the NICs. And I really don't think it's something wrong with the cards cuz they are old, since replacing it with a PCI NIC made no difference either. Just keeps isolating itself from the network!

Need more info. How many computers are connected to this hub? Are they all unable to get a valid IP address? If so, try directly connecting each pc (one at a time) to the modem and see if you get connected. If only one pc is not getting an IP address, try re-installing TCP/IP on the network properties.

Only one computer is having this problem with obtaining an IP. I have like 7 other ones able to DHCP off my ADSL without a problem. I think there's something wrong with the adapter's configuration and what is actually showing up in the Windows System Profile for the NIC. Again, on my other computer, an issue such as this one occurred where an NIC disables itself because it cannot obtain a free IRQ via Plug and Play config (beats me why this happened), but with some fudging around I got it working. Maybe I should attempt to connect to a PC directly, or directly off my ADSL modem instead of through the hub, and see what happens.