What's up with Ipconfig?

toasty · 15 Jun 2011

I'm new to Windows 7 so this is probably an easy fix. I'm running W7x64 Ultimate.

The other day I had a quick power outage. When this happens (when I had XP) I would always have to cycle the power on my modem and router before I could reconnect to the internet. Most times I'd have to run ipconfig /release then ipconfig /renew in order to get a functioning IP address, then that was the end of it.

Yesterday the power hiccuped for the first time while running W7x64. I cycled the power on the modem & router. My Xbox 360 was able to get online perfect. My computer however, no.

Ipconfig /release was fine. However ipconfig /renew timed out and left me with the 169.xxx.xxx.xxx IP address and I was unable to do anything in terms of network connectivity. I vaguely remember having this issue with a Vista computer years back. But I donno. Is there something simple I'm missing?

How'd I get online this morning? I left my router/modem unplugged all night long and also tried different Ethernet cables, ultimately using the original cable I had before the power jumped.

Any thoughts? I ran ipconfig from the CMD prompt, just as I always have with XP.

Ztruker · 15 Jun 2011

Did you try doing a restart or powering off then on?

toasty · 16 Jun 2011

Yeah, I tried all sorts of things.....

Power off computer
Disconnect PC power cord
Pull out power on the modem and router (wired linksys), wait then 30secs power on modem, wait till all lights are green then power on router.

Would running CMD as an admin to execute ipconfig have any different effect?

Dwarf · 16 Jun 2011

It shouldn't matter whether you run CMD elevated or not.

Can you post back with a copy of what you get with ipconfig /all

Check Device Manager. Is there an exclamation mark on the Networks category (you may need to expand it)?

Bill2 · 16 Jun 2011

169... ip address means the NIC cant contact the DHCP server for whatever reason. Why dont you just give your NIC/NICs static ip's?

fseal · 16 Jun 2011

Do you have photoshop CS5 or some other fairly recent Adobe software installed?

It probably installed a piece of broken Apple software called "Bonjour" which hammers DHCP on Win7 machines.

See this to remove it: How-To: Remove Bonjour and fix networking issues

ITGuy505 · 16 Jun 2011

If it is the Bonjour issue then you can check the services for the Bonjour service. It may be listed as a random string of characters which can be fixed by typing the following commands in an elevated command prompt:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Bonjour\mDNSResponder.exe" -remove
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Bonjour\mDNSResponder.exe" -install

This may not fix the networking issue though. If it doesn't then I found an easy way to solve it without removing Bonjour (because you may need it for your software) is to set the service to a delayed start. This is because the service will assign an gateway IP address of 0.0.0.0 if it starts before your network card grabs an IP from your router/DHCP server. You may need to restart after doing this or release and renew your IP address.