IP Address conflict on Home Network

[nodnerb2]

Hi,

I have come home to my house in France for the holidays and am now back in my role of Mr Fixit.

I have a home network that has 3 PC's on it sometimes normally only 2 but recently only one as the other one seems to be causing some problems.

Let me try and explain how it is all assembled etc to avoid too many questions asking the obvious.

I am using a Netgear DG 834 ADSL Modem/Router/Firewall unit.

I have used this for nearly 2 yrs now in the UK first and then when we moved down here in the rented house first (without the problem I am having now)and now we have bought our own home and this is when the problems showed up.

In the UK and and for the first 12 months down here it used to support 5 machines. 3 Hard wired and the other two via a Linksys Wireles G Access Point. One of the wireless ones was my daughters PC nd the other was this Laptop I am typing this on.

My wife is normally connected to her office on Remote Desktop via her Toshiba Satellite Laptop running Win XP Pro SP 2.

I use a Sony Vaio running Win XP SP 1 (This connects flawlessly here and with the same Netgear Unit at my office and apartment in Germany)

These two machines can see each other although they are in different workgroups and surf the net etc no problems each is connected to the Unit via a Cable.

The problems start when my Daughters PC starts up. It is a home made unit with an MSI KT7 Delta Mobo and an AMD XP 2800 CPU 512 Mb RAM. It is running Win ME as it's OS as many of the games she has been playing up to now are not supported in an XP or 2K Environment.

As soon as her machine starts I see an error message in the screen of my laptop that says:

Windows System Error

There is an IP Address conflict with another system on the network.

Whilst this is displayed pages like Google will load up ok but if you search for something it just times out. Connections to my wifes remote desktop also get knocked back on time outs.

I can go to the Router page at 192.168.0.1 and view the attached devices each has it's own no in this case they are shown with their correct names and using Ip Addys 192.168.0.3, 192.168.0.4, 192.168.0.6. The machines are plugged into ports 1 2 and 4 on the Netgear unit.

I have run an ipconfig /all from the command prompt on all 3 and each shows the same IP Addy as it is listed as using on the Router Status page.

If I turn my daughters PC off within a fews econds everthing has returned to normal 90% of the time.


I did a tracert for www.google.com on each machine when the 3 were connected and the results were pretty similar.

Can anyone suggest why I am getting this error message and the whole Network grinds to a halt when I see via the Router Status Page and doing the Ipconfig /all check that each machine has a different IP Addy?

I bought a new unit in Germany yesteday and will change the one here if that is the problem. If I don't need to all the beter I can take the new one back unopened and get my money back.

[paul9]

Hi, Brendon. You may have two or more items set in DHCP Server mode. Make sure it is really only one.

[eminem_rh25]

I suggest you just manuely assign an IP Address to every PC that you don't take when you/your wife travels, it will take care of most of the problem

[nodnerb2]

Hi,

Paul - How do I check for this?

eminem_rh25- How do manually set the IP Addy?

[paul9]

Control panel> Network and Internet Connections>Network Connections>Right click on the network connection and select properties. Select tcp/ip protocol. Properties should read to obtain dns server address and ip address automatically. The advanced properties? Well see if the ones on your daughter's PC and the other machines match. The goal is to have the router assign your local network addresses, although you can assign manual IPs in these dialogues.
That is for XP, I can't remember the ME specifics. Also, the workgroup/computer name formats are different in ME/XP. Spaces in particular are okay in one OS and cause grief in the other OS. Best to use shortish names, all upper case, no spaces.

[nodnerb2]

Hi,

I checked that and found no difference to how it was before, the PC is still the same name it is still in the same workgroup as my laptop. I removed a few extra dial up adaptors that are no longer required and lo and behold it goes onto the NW and goes online No Error message. The problem now seems to be confined to my wifes Laptop. I have taken her remote desktop info and can log onto her office machine from my Vaio no problem( she has actually been doing her work from my lappie this afternoon other wise I would have typed this update sooner!!)

Her machine now seems to be running at a fraction of the speed it was. I get timeout errors when trying to get onto her remote desktop or my webmail server.

The really strange thing is the home page (Google.co.uk) will load in a flash and then if you enter a search term it just hangs and hangs without loading anythng else. If you unplug the NW Cable( disconnect from the BB) and use the phone line you can get online and do all the normal functions at dialup speed.

I have run tracert to her office DNS when it wouldn't load the Remote Desktop and it comes in as race Completed after 16 hops. There are no errors indicated in the results.

Since we go the broadband connected at this nhouse there have only been two software things loaded onto her PC. These are Adobe Acrobat and the Driver for the Canon D1250U2 Scanner.

I thought about doing a System Restroe to see if this would clear up what's going on. I went back to September and tried it said it couldn't restore the point I selected so I tried another one with the same result.

When I was looking through the Restore Points I noticed several that say Software Distribution Service 2.0 these are once a month except for October when there was 2 instances of this. Do I understand correctly that this is an MS Update thing?

When it's stuck on BB I have done a Ctrl, Alt, Del and looked at the processes.

There are no applications running and there are 7 instances of Svchost.exe.The User Names are attributed as follows

4 System, 2 Network Service and a Local Service

The machine I am typing this on has 5 Applications running and only shows 4 instances of this program 2 System, 1 Network Service and 1 Local Service

Do these large No of occurences of this program have any bearing on the problems I am tring to eradicate?