New Laptop - Can't get IP via wireless - 0's or 169.254

[bs73]

Hi,

OK, this is driving me mad! I have a PC and 2 laptops at home (work and wife!) and all are wireless connected to my linksys wrt54gs router which goes to a dsl modem and to the net...all 3 of these computers work fine (always have) and grab a new IP address from the DHCP server in the router as required...

My new laptop however does not and i can not figure out how to get it to....i have added it to the access list of the router and have confirmed that when not using any security on the router (i normally have WPA turned on), the laptop is indeed able to get an IP address from the right range (19.168.x.x) and work normally. As soon as i try to turn WPA (or even WEP) back on in the router and set the laptop appropriately (with the key etc), the laptop has the following symptoms:
- sees the NW
- sees good signal strength
- attempts to connect - always halts at the 'acquring network address' stage
- gets either all 0's or 169.254 (automatic private) ip address

I assume the DHCP process is failing, but am not sure why. The laptop is set up to grab IP addresses automatically. I could set it statically but that would defeat the purpose and would mean i would have to change it when going out etc.

Anyone with the problem and a proven fix?
Any tools people can recommend so that i can see the details of the communication between the laptop and router and exactly what is going wrong?

thanks!!!!

 

[nweaver]

setting it static won't fix it..

you are getting a keying mismatch in the process, either mistyping it, or incompatability with the standards. Ensure you are useing the same encryption cipher (WPA can use WEP, TKIP, CKIP/MIC, WPA2 is an AES Cipher) on both ends.

Not getting an IP is classic sign of keys not matching up.

 

[bs73]

OK, great - thanks for the info - but i am sure the keys are matching...i have even tried basic '123456' keys on both sides and it still doesn't work

 

[Fardringle]

Try without any encryption at all to make sure that the laptop can connect to the router. If that works and encryption doesn't, then what nweaver said has to be true and there is something wrong with the encryption settings or the security key on the laptop.