Zen Internet Support Forum

A really strange thing happened to my Windows 98SE box between 31st December and 1stJanuary. On 31st I could connect to the internet via my Zen account no problem. On 1st Jan, no go. I checked in WinIpCfg and the IP address had been set to one of the funny MS default ones that begin with 169.... Several of the other fields were empty, e.g. "DNS Servers", "DHCP Server".

I tried everything I could to fix the problem, including removing and reinstalling the nic and TCP/IP. Nothing worked.

But when I tried my Linux Ubuntu drive (I have a number of racks), the connection worked fine. I also tried Windows 2000 successfully.

Then I reinstated and earlier 98SE drive image and it worked once again! I then reinstated the latest image, which was pretty much up to date and it still worked. It's still working now.

***** My question: Had this palaver something to do with the "Lease Obtained/Lease Expired" entries in WinIpCfg being affected by the rollover from 31/12/2007 to 01/01/2008? Had I not had my drive image to reinstate, I wouldn't know how to have fixed this problem. I didn't find anything on the web about it.

You're probably right about the lease having expired, if the PC was unable to retrieve new IP details from a DHCP server (probably on your router) then it would default to the 169 address. Why it couldn't get new IP details though is an odd one, perhaps an issue with antivirus or software firewall on the PC or maybe the DHCP function stopped working on your router temporarily.

If it happens again you should try running 'ipconfig /renew' from the Win98 command line which will trigger a manual DHCP renewal and get new IP details.

If that doesn't work try inputting an address manually on your network interface from the networks control panel under the TCP/IP driver options, be sure the address you enter is part of the range used on your local network e.g. 192.168.0.110 if you use 192.168.0.x IP addresses using the default 255.255.255.0 subnet mask.

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David Nelson
Team Leader
Business Support Unit
Zen Internet

I would go with David.  Win98 was never really designed to be networked, it was more aimed at the home stand alone market.  One of its bugs was that if it dropped its IP it didn't renegotiate another one so I'm guessing that the manually renewing it in DOS would have solved your problem.  

 BTW, if you need to renew the command is    ipconfig /renew_all    the 'ipconfig /renew' only came into effect from Win2k
 

Hi,

AHH!! BUT!! sometimes if an IP address has been dropped the lease may still need to be cleared first before a new lease can be given or accepted.

Therefore I recommend that the correct sequence should be IPCONFIG /release, followed by the above i.e. IPCONFIG /renew (as in renew the lease) and then a new IP from a DHCP server can correctly be assigned once again. That should work or solve it.

**Hope you dont think I'm nit picking but it just occured to me that if you don't clear the lease properly first the renew may not work that was all.

Regards Ivan

It's happened again, the mangling that is! The IP address on my second PC has reset itself to 169.254.138.147 once again. Attempting ipconfig /release_all then ipconfig /renew_all made no change.

I tried setting an IP address manually to 192.168.1.65 and subnet mask to
255.255.255.0. Rebooted. Still couldn't connect to internet.

Fired up browser and entered Speedtouch IP address http://192.168.1.254 Connected immediately to Speedtouch. Did connectivity check under "Internet Services". All ticks are green!

Then I wondered, what happens if I type in the *IP address* of the website I'm trying to access, e.g. http://news.bbc.co.uk (the main BBC News web page) is http://212.58.226.77

Typed it in - bingo! Connected!

***** So it looks like the PC can't see a DNS. But why? *****

By the way, the same PC connects to the internet (e.g. http://news.bbc.co.uk) just fine when I plug in either the Linux rack or the Windows 2K rack. But the 98SE installation has been working fine for months and the trouble only started after 01/01/08.

How can I get the DNS thingummy working again?

Thanks!

Hi,

Your machine has something called a "DNS Resolver cache" & if this cache becomes dirty or gets a corrupted entry then it wont play ball, it wont be able to resolve an IP address to its hostname (i.e. convert say BBC.CO.UK to its IP 226.23.37.10 etc). And this is a VERY very commonly seen problem on many machines connecting to the Internet.

Solution, there are x2 quick ways to solve the above:- No.1 a quick reboot will obviously clean the resolver cache & reset it again for new work. No.2 (if you don't want to reboot the machine) at a DOS prompt type the command IPCONFIG /FLUSHDNS and press enter.

**Be aware that the machine uses the "ARP cache", to inorder to send information to the DNS resolver cache.

**Also you should check your machine hasn't lost its settings or that it has the correct settings, in the TCP/IP properties for Primary & Secondary DNS servers here at Zen (assuming your using Zens servers for your DNS service, i.e. as you dont haveto you know?? *dont know if you were aware of that. You can use other DNS providers).

Ivan

ARP doesn't come in to it.  The ARP cache is a list of all MAC addresses a host knows about on a LAN segment.

Cyteck is right about the IPCONFIG /FLUSHDNS command though, this will empty the cache.  But again, this doesn't sound like the problem as your cache should have had some DNS entries in it already so any previously working websites should have worked.

Did you have a DNS server address in the list?  If so, what were they?  I suspect that you will have had 1 entry of 192.168.1.254 or similar.
You can try entering the DNS server addresses manually on your PC.  They are 212.23.3.100 and 212.23.6.100.