Microsoft → [XPHome] No network connection after repairs in shop....

I really don't want to take my laptop back to Office Depot about this, because I'm hoping they just made changes to connect in-house while they were doing repairs, and I just need to undo them.

My problem is my laptop was apparently updated, because it has the new Vista/Win7 GUI which I hate... and I can't find anything. [It says it is still SP2, but it looks nothing like it.] My Broadcom adapter isn't working right, and only connects to an in-house IP in spite of DHCP and DNS being set to automatic. I know the problem is my ignorance, but I don't know where to begin. I'm tired of putting in my info, and having it wiped out.

My new Win7 laptop also lost it's ability to connect after Windows updates in late Feb.. I just restored it to a prior date, and haven't updated anything since, so it's working OK for now. I couldn't restore the XP, it developed dll relocation problems too, which some SP2 machines had after those updates.

I apologize if this is too long and confusing, but if anyone has ANY suggestions of where to look to correct my problem with the XP2... I will be eternally grateful.

Does your ISP require a static IP or is your router configured to not hand out IP's? (DHCP server disabled). A lot of 'techs' will dump static IP settings so they can connect to their network and forget / not care to restore the original IP information.

When you say it was 'upgraded', do you mean they installed a newer operating system on it or just that the visual aspect of it looks different? If it's the correct OS, you can just change the appearance (right click on the desktop somewhere and choose 'personalize' I think. Should be the bottom-most option in the drop down list.)

If they installed a newer OS without your authorization, it's a bigger problem.

DHCP had been working for six years, and I checked my router's settings and it's still set to hand out 5 connections, as before.

I'm sorry, I should have said MS "updates"... have changed the visual interface.

Since my original message, I decided to check the Windows firewall, because I never used it before. [I had a separate Sygate firewall, which he uninstalled.] I'm not familiar with the MS firewall, and I don't understand why it doesn't have exceptions set for my internet connections. Maybe I just don't understand what it means when it says it is "enabled" for my network connections. Can you tell me what it should be showing under Windows firewall? Thanks for your response!

Lets not worry about your possible firewall issue just yet. for now if you could post the output you get when you execute this command on the XP machine in a dos cmd window:ipconfig /all
This will show us if your network card is getting a valid IP address.

Also, just as a sanity check, do the same thing on your Win 7 machine as well and post that as well.

I'll have to post the info requested tomorrow. I should have said earlier that the IP address the XP is getting [auto configured] is wrong... it's an internal 169.254.66.74 address. Couldn't find what is setting that.

Thanks for the offer to help, and I'll be back tomorrow with the IP config info.

A 169 is just a default IP when there is no DHCP server available or, for some reason, it is unable to obtain a DHCP lease. This would allow you to route to other systems on a network. APIPA is to thank for that.

You mention the DHCP service on the router is configured to only hand out 5 IP's. How many devices do you have on the network which have a current IP lease? The available DHCP pool may be the issue here - can you bump the available IP's to 10 to check?

If you open Services (run: 'services.msc'), is the DHCP client running?

I would suggest doing a repair on the nic next. There are a few ways to do it. If you run 'ncpa.cpl', you will pull up the network connections, you can right click the ethernet interface and choose 'repair'. You can also run a repair from command line as well as some other helpful features.

'netsh int ip reset c:\resetlog.txt' (filename can be whatever)
There is also a free Microsoft 'fix it' for the above - »support.microsoft.com/kb/299357

'netsh int winsock reset' is another recommendation I would have.

Following that, I would try giving the nic a static IP. If you need help with that just let us know.

Thanks aguen and psafux! After copying the Win7 ipconfig file and seeing that it has THREE wireless connections available, I changed the router limit to 10 as suggested, and voila! When I started the XP today it connected.

What I have is a WRT54G Linksys router with a desktop wired connection, 2 laptops, a Roku and a PS3 wireless connections.

The Broadcom adapter is not showing the connection time and status on one of the utility pages, and I'm wondering if a driver update got lost during the repair. Anyway, I downloaded the latest driver update and saved it, in case more problems surface.

Not sure why, or if the unused Intel connections on the new Win7 put me over the limit, but I hope that was it. [Before, I had looked at the config files, I had raised the connection limit to 8, and that had not worked.]

Thanks so much for all of your advice.