I have got an anoying problem with my network.
in the bottom in the toolbar there is an exclamtion mark, saying limited or no activity, (this has only come up recently.)
i look in status of the connection and i have noticed that my ip adress begins with 169, i know that this is not good. i have tried renewing the ip address, but no luck it says could not be completed.

i have also tried renewing the ip address in command prompt but comes up with . ' An error occurred while renewing interface Local area connection 3 : unable to contact your dhcp server. request has time out.'

this problem is very anoying as my network has been working well for a while, now all of a sudden this has occured. i now cant share my internet, or files and printer.

this error only shows up on the host computer.

You post does not provide much info as to how you are connected and a couple of details about the hardware you are running, O/S, etc.
Did you run the network wizard on each machine? Remember it will change your Workgroup name back to default.
Have you updated Firewall ?
Have you checked connection settings at each machine ?Did you try the Ping command?

o.k

sorry the last post was a bit brief, iam running xp professional, i have run the network wizard several times on each computer.
i have nortan anti-virus 2005.
i have checked connection at each computer, and i have also tried pinging the client and vice versa but all data is lost.
iam in a big ditch in wot to do, shall i start from scratch or no?

You are still not very helpful. How is your network built up? Where do all the computers connect to? What are you trying to achieve? Is every computer having this problem?

Try describing your problem in a whole screenful of text..

o.k

i have two pc's networked together via cat 5e cable, each computer has a network card. neither pc is a server or client, they just share each others resources. on one of the pc's the message doesnt come up at all, theres just no activity releated to the network. (internet, mapped drives, files, and printers.) none of these listed work at all.

but on the other computer (the higher spec pc, which is used most.) this message does show up. (as quoted in post 1) now this is quite strange, as both computers were working fine together, i even shared net conenction, files and printers. i also played netowrk games against each other. now all of sudden the computers or no longer talking to each other.

would it be easier if one computer was assigned to be a server and the other to be a client. and i could log on to any user on both computers or no?
iam a beginner to networking. :blackeye: :blackeye:

Since you were sharing the internet connection with this setup then the computer with the internet connection was the server and still should be.

The fact that the other computer can't obtain an IP address suggests that either the network connection is gone or the ICS on the server side is no longer working.

First check the LEDs on the networc cards. The link light should be on if both of the computers are running and the cable is OK. On both machines make sure that all the network cards are installed and configured. Set up internet connection sharing again.

ok thanks i think its the ics side of it, could you help explain how to resolve the problem
many thanks grimesy69.

Well, how did you set it up the first place? Just do it again.

will try it

Often forgotten ; Pay attention when you re-run networking Wizard ,It will reset the Workgroup 'Name" to default.You must re-type your proper Wgroup name.
And always re-run on each machine.
Just a couple of thougts on common mistakes.

this problem has also occured i think eversince i changed some thing in my start-up menu (msconfig). i will update this post later tonite with my start up list. :grinthumb