We are running a Windows NT 4.0 domain with Windows 2000 Pro clients. We have DHCP running with a 10 hour lease time. When one of my users logs in for the first time each day, he does not get an IP address. If you run ipconfig, you see he has no IP address. If you run ipconfig /renew, it picks up an IP address and all is well. If you run ipconfig /release, then reboot the computer, it does not pick up a new IP address. It seems to me that the system is not requesting an IP address from the DHCP server automatically as it should. Once it has one, you can reboot and you are ok, at least until tomorrow morning. As I said before, you can force it to request an IP address. Any ideas on this? Thanks Ron

Where does the DHCP server live? is on your subnet or another one?

Our subnet.

Microsoft reccomends that you upgrade the server to win2k first before the workstations go to win2k. It Could be a problem there, check the MS knowledge base. You may need to use as part of the login script the ipconfig /renew to insure getting an ip until you can upgrade the server.

I know of a few switches (high dollar ones) that have a feature where when a port goes live it backs off to reduce the possibilities from getting any kind of damaging surge when a computer is first coming on-line. Sometimes it is backing off when your client is sending the DHCP request. You may want to eliminate this possibility.