[simbeb]

Hi there

I have a home network consisting in 2 laptops connecting to the local network and Internet through a Belkin wireless modem-router. Both PCs are operated with XP. The network is properly set-up and the PCs using automatically assigned IP adresses, share files and printer happily_ that's when they are not fighting to access the local network. Most of the time I can only access the router with one PC at a time. If one is connected, the other one will keep looking for its IP address for ever. It's been like that for as far as I've had 2 PCs at home (14 months) and I've tried every possible solution with no durable success. Please help!

[spot]

What solutions have you tried that have failed? Have you hard-coded a different fixed LAN IP address in each machine, told it the router gateway IP address and the IP addresses of your ISP's DNS servers and ignored any router DHCP settings?

[simbeb]

I don't think I understood everything you wrote here but yes I have tried giving my PCs a fixed IP address, with no result.

[philthomas]

Have you tried setting up an Alternate Configuration on one or both of the Laptops ?

See here for more info on how.

[spot]

Originally Posted by simbeb I don't think I understood everything you wrote here but yes I have tried giving my PCs a fixed IP address, with no result.

I'll step out while phil's discussing things or we'll give conflicting ideas which won't help in the slightest, but the thing in my first post which you probably didn't catch was that putting in two different fixed 192.168.x.x addresses and the correct 192.168.x.1 gateway for the router isn't enough, you also need to hard-enter the DNS server addresses under the DNS tab, and that means you have to have written them down somewhere from a working connection first using a command-line "ipconfig /all". Without those hard-coded DNS entries you'll not get a response to your browser requests, you'll just get "no such website" or words to that effect.

[simbeb]

Originally Posted by philthomas Have you tried setting up an Alternate Configuration on one or both of the Laptops ? See here for more info on how.

Hi,

Yesterday, I gave one of the laptops a fixed IP address that is outside of the DHCP server's range. Used the router's IP address as the DNS, left the other laptop as IP assigned by server, and obviously left DHCP enabled. It worked wonderfully for about half an hour. For the first time ever, my wife and I were both able to surf the web at the same time, on our respective laptops! That's until mine lost connection for ever. It cannot even find the router now. We are back to square one, so:
-Should I try giving both laptops a fixed IP_ will that solve it once and for all?
_ should I retrieve a DNS from a cmd prompt as Spot suggest rather than just use the router's address?
-Should I just forget about wireless G and start thinking Homeplug (this has been going on for 14 months now)?

Cheers guys.