Hi, I'm a college student and I have been using an ethernet cord to connect to the internet in my dorm room. It has worked wonderfully for about a week, but starting today, when I plug the ethernet in, my computer will not connect to the internet. I ran the troubleshooting program, and it told me the problem was, "local area connection doesn't have a valid ip configuration". I have absolutely no idea how to fix this. Please help, and please dumb down your answers, since I am not very good with computers. Thanks!

you need to run ipconfig to see what your IP address is, and why are you not contacting the college IT staff about this? If you do not know how to run ipconfig and understand what it returns, you really should seek out someone on campus who has the basic computer skills to trouble shoot for you. "Knowledge is a drug. Just say 'KNOW.'"

Because I would rather fix this myself and save time tomorrow. And I know how to run ipconfig, I'm just not sure what I'm supposed to do after that..

Ipconfig gives you the IP address of the system, if the ip is in the 169.x.x.x range then you start looking at the NIC....the cable.... the port in the router Which is why you should be talking to the IT Staff

Hi, Please try the following steps to troubleshoot the issue. 1. Temporarily disable Firewall and third party antivirus program on the computer for a test. 2. Boot the system to Safe Mode with networking and see if the issue persists. If not, please also boot to Clean Boot environment to determine the possible cause. 3. Update or reinstall the NIC driver and update the router’s firmware. 4. Refresh a new IP address ======================= a. Click the Start Button, type "cmd" (without quotation marks), in the search result list, right click on Cmd.exe and select Run as administrator. Note: If you are prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type your password, or click Continue. b. In the popup window, type the following commands and press Enter one by one: ipconfig /release ipconfig /renew Then, the new IP address will be obtained. If the issue persists, please proceed to the next steps. 5. Assign a static IP address for a test ========================= a. Click "Start", input "NCPA.CPL" (without quotation marks) and press Enter. b. Right click on the connection that you use for the local connection, and then click "Properties". c. Click “Continue” to verify the administrator permission. d. Click to select "Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4)", and then click "Properties". e. Select “use the following IP address”. Manually set “IP address” (For example, if your router IP address is 192.168.1.1, we can type the IP address as 192.168.1.22. If the router IP address is 192.168.0.1, we should type in 192.168.0.22.) Manually set “Subnet mask” as 255.255.255.0 (Note: We can use this address as the default subnet mask.) Manually set “Default gateway” (Note: Default gateway is the IP address of the router.) Manually set “preferred DNS server” (Note: Preferred DNS server is also the address of the router.) f. Click “OK”. 6. If the computer is connecting to a router, please bypass it and connect to the network directly for a test. Regards, Sabrina Please remember to click “Mark as Answer” on the post that helps you, and to click “Unmark as Answer” if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.

He is not connecting to a router that he has access too. I guarantee it. Which is why, even tho you want to fix it yourself, you may not be able too. See whats happening is, your NIC card is asking for a network address, which a DHCP server would serve up, normally. In your case this isnt happening. I would recommend grabbing one of your roommates machines, and plug it into the same jack, see if this gets internet. If it does, than something is up with your NIC card. If it doesnt, call campus IT. Let them know you have a dead port in your dorm room, and they will fix it. Sometimes we try to the point of ignorance, when no matter what we try, we cannot resolve. Ask, and you shall receive. :-)Network Systems Engineer * Zvetco Biometrics * Windows Server 2008 R2 * Core2 6600 @ 3.30GHz * 16 GIGS RAM * NVIDIA 9400GT * ** " Please remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.

5. Assign a static IP address for a test ========================= After the above setup my computer was able to identify the router and I was able to connect to internet. My question : What could be the reason for my computer to no detect router without static IP ? FYI : Till a few hours earlier I was able to use same router and internet connection without static IP. The problem appeared suddenly when I restarted my PC after a few hours. Any ideas on the reason ??