Computer won't acquire IP address

[RA1D]

howdy folks, i've spent a day on this and i'm starting to get annoyed. i got new RAM in and installed it. RAM is rated at 1066 @ 2.2v but when i installed it, it was at 800Mhz. no biggie, i restarted, went into the bios and changed my fsb setting to 'linked' to match my cpu and set voltage to 2.2v. after the computer started up, the screen was jacked up. resolution was different (looked like 800x600) and the colors were all green and orange. and it locked up.

so i restarted, went into bios and changed back to auto setting and voltages. after start up, everything seemed normal and i clicked on internet explorer. no go. so i reinstalled the network adapter for my mobo from the driver cd it came with. nothing. checked network connections and nothing is being received.

so i decided to reinstall the OS. after that, i installed the network adapter. still nothing. just for giggles, i reinstalled the OS and network adapter again. no giggles and still no internet.

i called my trusty ISP and asked them if they need to reset the modem since i reinstalled the OS. after speaking with a couple of different people, i was connnected with tech rep from toronto. she had me power off my computer while she reset the modem. she said the modem was not 'seeing' my computer so had me try a different ethernet cable. still nothing. we looked at my hardware device manager and checked to see if i had any 'yellow exclamation marks' which i did, under 'other devices'. she said my problem was that my OS reinstall was not complete and i needed to finish downloading drivers.

the drivers that i needed were for my video card and tv tuner. i didn't think that was the problem but i loaded the drivers for both anyways and still no internet.

so the problem i see is that my computer will not acquire an IP address. i am able to connect to the internet using a different computer (the one i'm on now) with the same router and modem. i've installed, uninstalled, reinstalled the network adapter several times. i've disabled, enabled the connection several times and after trying to acquire an ip address, it says it has 'limited or no connectivity'. i've tried to 'repair' the connection with the same results.

any help on the issue would be greatly appreciated cause i know squat about network connections. thanks

-Mat

[Elysium]

I think my mom's laptop has the same problem. You right click on the network icon in the taskbar and click "Diagnose and repair" if in Vista. You might have already tried that, but it works for my mom's laptop.

[RA1D]

i switched back to XP a couple of weeks ago and i reinstalled xp when the problem occured. i actually did install vista and tried the 'diagnose and repair' with no results. i reinstalled XP and i've been troubleshooting with it on the computer.

edit: problem fixed.

i decided to shut down the computer and hit the switch on the psu also. i left the computer off for a few minutes and turned it back on.

SCORE!!!

internet back in effect. i don't know how installing new memory caused the problem or why shutting off the switch on the power supply fixed the problem but it did and now i can resume visiting my favorite porn sites...

[Hitman]

Well I can't tell you what was wrong, but you defiantly took the long road to solving your problem. Network problems are almost never OS related issues. It almost sounds like your problem was related to wake-on-lan, but can't really tell from the info you gave.

[Elysium]

You installed a whole new OS JUST to do the "Diagnose and Repair"? Wow man, I envy you.

Glad you got it fixed.

[killswitch83]

Originally Posted by Hitman

Well I can't tell you what was wrong, but you defiantly took the long road to solving your problem. Network problems are almost never OS related issues. It almost sounds like your problem was related to wake-on-lan, but can't really tell from the info you gave.

yep, as the ones of us who took networking classes in addition to the Computer Tech classes have been taught, the majority of problems with networking devices, be it routers, switches, adapters, WAPs, any of it, starts in Layer 1 (Physical Layer), which is hardware-related........my guess is perhaps there could have been an IRQ or I/O conflict with the network adapter and some other device, though Windows should have informed you if that were true. I chalk it up as "freak incident", lol.

[carpenator]

It sounds like it may be a issue when computer parts have capacitors that hold charge like batteries. When you shut your computer off for just a few seconds it still remembers the bad info sent to it and so never really resets. It used to be easy as you could pull the card. Now you have to remove power to the power supply or motherboard.

I used to see a lot of issues with Modems, those are the things used in the dark ages to connect with a phone like to the Internet. They would not receive a good AT hangup and would lock up. You would have to power off the computer and let it sit so that it would reset.

As long as the PFM works then I guess that is what matters.