Can't renew IP Address

[David Cressey]

Help.

I had a visit from the cable company today.  They installed a cable modem for me.  I got the "basic installation package"  in order to save 40 bucks.  

The only difference between "basic" and "premium" installation is that they don't install the software, and set up the account for you.  After they left,  I installed the dirvers that came on the CD they gave me,  no problem.

Then I got about halfway through installing the software,  when I got an error..  "Can't renew IP Address".  Naturally, this error wasn't listed in their little manual.  

What should I do?  If they have to send a truck back,  they are gonna charge me $50.00.  

BTW,  part way through the installation,  it tried to open my old dialup connection.  I figured that was an error,  so I canceled that dialup.  Did I screw up?   What's the best plan?

[jbucks]

David,

Without knowing your setup, here's a couple of things to try out...  (MS Windows centric)

1) Check your NIC's IP settings.  I presume you'll need to have it set up (for the new cable modem) to be DHCP.  
Make sure the settings are at
  - DHCP,
  - DNS automatically,

2) If the above ARE ALREADY set,  then
  - Open a DOS command window
  - type in 'ipconfig /release'

3) Then go through the new setup

4) reboot your system when done.

Let us know the results.

Jim

[The Gorn]

I like your sig, early 70's pop rock guy.

A few more thoughts.

While your computer is disconnected from the internet, any application that tries to access the internet will interfere with stuff you're doing in the "foreground". IE, if your computer is just sitting there disconnected and you then launch IE, your computer will launch the dial up networking application. Other applications can have the same effect, but hidden from view. The point is, make sure that anything that would try to get at the internet (like Outlook, other email clients, IE, other browsers, etc) are off, not running, have no icon in the system tray, etc.

My further guess is that the driver installation installed and launched some piece of internet-aware SW that started to run during the installation, which triggered the dialup. The only reliable way I've found to defeat this is to delete the dial-up networking connection itself from your networking properties (not the protocol or adapter, but the icon containing the phone number and stuff.)

If Jim's suggestion doesn't pan out, come back and tell us what model of cable modem, are you connecting it to USB or ethernet,is there a router involved, etc.  Right now "we know notheeeng!"

Also, do "ipconfig /all" at the command line and paste the listing into a message here as a diagnostic...

[David Cressey]

Thanks for your help.  The problem went away bafore I could read  it.

As it turns out,  I shut off power to the modem, rebooted,  
and tried again.  The problem went away.  

I don't know whether it's because of what I did,  or some other cause,  or because the cable provider hadn't done something with that IP address at their end,  until after the scheduled time of the cable installation.  

I've always had a distaste for debugging non reproducible phenomena.  Maybe that's what kept me away from networks.