OS: WinXP pro System: Laptop p800MHz, 192Mb Ram, Realtek RTL 8139 NIC Until a few days ago I was running fine on the University Network, however suddenly I couldn't connect to uni. Internet/Network/Intranet after having used NetSwitcher to change from my other local network to the Uni. network When I set up the computer to DHCP then it for one takes ages to start up, and after that I can see in the status that it sends 2 packets and receives 1 packets, but still no connection. I took my housemate's IP (assigned to him on same network) and entered it as a static IP which works fine so I guess it is not a hardware problem. I have tried IPCONFIG /release and /renew but I get a "already released" and "An error occurred while renewing interface local area connection: Access is denied" respectively. I have removed all NW protocols except TCP/IP, uninstalled my firewall and virus scanner (hmm should I be saying this?), right-clicked on windows\inf\nettcpip.inf to reinstall my TCP-IP and installed XP again (on top of the old one) but nothing works. Is there anyone here who knows what is wrong and/or why it happened? BTW: Reinstalling XP is the absolute final option for me - there must be other ways to fix it...

the university no longer has DHCP sver enabled any more. You need to get an assigned ip address

I think it has... I launched a packetsniffer to see what communication was made between the DHCP server and my computer: There is an discover (my comp.) and an offer (uni. DHCP server) but no request (my comp.) Furthermore my hoursemate has not entered any static IP address into his Network Settings.

This sounds similar to my problem. When I wake the computer up all IP Addresses are all zero. If I assign IP addresses manually and close the properties window, then go back and set to set automatically it finds IP Addresses. But when I shut down for the night it forgets them.

Don: Look under the Networking Forum here. I received an answer to an identical question (same headline) and it worked for me.