by Joe Kraynak on May 31, 2010
I just changed routers from a Netgear to a LinkSys. One of my computers found the wireless network but could not connect to it. It was stuck on “acquiring network address.” If I chose to repair the connection, I would get the message “renewing IP address,” but the system seemed unable to renew the IP address. The computer would connnect to the router fine with a LAN cable.
What fixed the problem for me was to remove the wireless Netgear entry from my computer (PC running Windows XP):
- Click Start, Settings, Network Connections.
- Right-click the icon for the wireless network and click Properties.
- Click the Wireless Networks tab.
- Below Preferred Networks, click the entry for your previous wireless router.
- Click Remove and confirm the removal.
What happens, it seems, is that the wireless network entry for the previous router prevents Windows from renewing or releasing the IP address it was using so that IP address can be reassigned to the computer. By deleting the entry, you release the IP address and Windows can renew it for the new router.
If you try this solution, please post a comment to let me know whether it worked for you.
by Joe Kraynak on May 25, 2010
My wife was having trouble logging into her Novell Groupwise account at her school from home. When she tried to login, she kept getting this error message: Your login is not current. Please login again.
I tried clearing the browser cache as some have recommended elsewhere, but that didn’t help. The solution for us was to use a different DNS (domain name server). Instead of using the Wildblue satellite Internet DNS, we adjusted the network’s TCP/IP settings to use the DNS offered by OpenDNS, an alternate DNS (it’s free).
Change DNS in Windows 7
Here’s what you do in Windows 7 (and probably Windows Vista, too):
- Click Start, Control Panel, View network status and tasks (below Network and Internet).
- Click Change adapter settings (on the left).
- Right-click the network connection through which you connect to the Internet and click Properties.
- Click the TCP/IP entry (below This connection uses the following items) and then click the Properties button (below the list). You may have more than one entry, such as Internet Protocol Version 6 (TCP/IPv6) and Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4). On my system, the one that has the DNS settings is the IPv4 one, but you may need to check both to find the right one.
- Click Use the following DNS server addresses if this option is not already checked. If the option is checked, jot down the numbers in the Preferred and Alternate DNS server boxes, so you can change back to the original settings if this doesn’t work.
- Enter the following DNS server addresses:
Preferred DNS server: 208.67.222.222
Alternate DNS server: 208.67.220.220 
- Click OK and then click OK again to save your settings.
- Try logging into your Novell Groupwise account. If it works, please come back and let me know.
Change DNS in Windows XP
Here’s how you change your DNS addresses in Windows XP:
- Click Start, click Control Panel, click Network and Internet Connections, and then click Network Connections.
- Right-click the network connection that you want to configure, and then click Properties.
- On the General tab (for a local area connection), or the Networking tab (for all other connections), click Internet Protocol (TCP/IP), and then click Properties.
- Jot down the existing DNS settings, whatever they happen to be.
- Remove the checkmark next to Obtain DNS server address automatically.
- Click Use the following DNS server addresses, and then type the preferred DNS server and alternate DNS server IP addresses in the Preferred DNS server and Alternate DNS server boxes, as shown below.
- Click OK to save your changes.
Now try it! And don’t forget to come back here and let me know whether this helped.
