home network question

Hi, I have linksys 4 port router, with ADSL, I have been using it for about 5 months with out any troubles, sharing my connection between a dell desktop and a dell laptop.
My brother just bought a toshiba satellite, and I just can´t get it to connect to the Internet. It is running winxp pro with an intel ethernet card. In all my other boxes I just needed to configure my connection with "obtain ip automatically", so that the router acts as dhcp and assigns the ip. In the toshiba laptop, I put all the correct settings but it is not connected, it obtains a wierd ip address that doesn't correspond to those for my internal LAN ie: 192.168.1.xxxx It seems that the router isn't recognized, I am sure there's some problem with the toshiba cause both dells still work fine.
What else can I try??? Any help would be greatly appreciated

Thanks

Are you sure the ethernet card is working properly? Try pinging localhost. If that works fine you might want to check if your winxp pro set up a firewall on your internet connection by default, I have seen that happen before. Just go to your local area connections, and go to the properties on your ethernet card, and check out the advanced tab and make sure firewall is unchecked.
also you should check that your computer doesn't have the same hostname as one of the other computers on the network. Just open up "system" from the control pannel.

Other then that, just do your basic diagnostic check, do you have green lights on both the router and ethernet card? If not you might have the wrong cable type.

Hope that helps.

If your Toshiba is not receiving its ip address correctly, the first thing I would do is check my cable conection between the router and laptop. Next, since you have already checked your tcp/ip settings, I would try to renew my lease on an address with ipconfig. If that didnt work I would reinstall the network adapter. If after that it srill doesnt work, you can alway try assigning it permanent values, and set the router as the default gateway and see if this works. (By the way the weird address you see is just a default ip when the card isnt assigned one.) Hope that helps.

I once fixed a similar problem by unplugging and re-plugging the network adapter. Windows is funny that way.

If you're still stumped, try this site for small networks

or ask in their forums

First of all thanks to everyone for your help but my problem isn't solved yet.
I have uninstalled and the installed the network adapter, but still it can't get the ip from the dhcp. I have used ipconfig /renew, but it gives me a message that its unable to connect to the dhcp server. I pinged localhost and that's ok. I have manually setup the ip and the gateway but still no luck. The cable I am using works fine cause I have used it with other boxes. There are lights on my router but not on the adapter.

What else can I try??

thanks

once with exactly that problem, using a USB-port 80211 link, I was told by Linksys tech support to pull out the plug on the adapter and plug it in again. it worked.

lights on the router but not the ther ethernet card you say? do you mean there are no LED's on the eth card, or there is LED's but just not lighting up? I would recommend opening up your box and making sure your card is sitting nice in the slot.

First off, I wouldn't recommend opening a laptop to see anything unless your trained. Second, it sounds like you need to try a different NIC. The way to troubleshoot these types of issues is to make one change and then test it. If you go willy-nilly making changes you'll never get anywhere, and if you do fix it you won't know what to do if it happens again.

No link light=no physical connection=no love.

Hope that helps.

I had a probelem once with a computer that I was trying to share an internet connection with through a router. No matter what I did I could not get the computer to get a IP therefore it would not connect. I ended up throwing the NIC Card away and bying more of name brand one that worked. With the old NIC card it wouldn't even say I ad a ethernet adapter. I would talk to the tech support people and see if you couldn't send it in then have them check it out for you.