my hub has done me wrong

[charonzen]

I had set up an internet connection through my router which was working, but then I decided to put a hub in for a home network. I then encountered this bizarre symptom in which the Local Area Connection in my system tray started throwing up alternating messages, rapid-fire, that my cable was unplugged and that I was connected. That got old fast, so I disabled it, and then I couldn't enable it - "could not renew IP address". So I was on the phone with my ISP for an hour, going through all the cable configurations. The guy thinks it's my modem at this point, but if I do ipconfig /all, I get:
primary dns suffix: (blank)
node type: unknown
...
dhcp enabled: yes
autoconfiguration enabled: yes
autoconfiguration ip address: 169.254.xxx.xxx (well, without the xxx's, but you get it)
subnet mask: 255.255.0.0
default gateway: (blank)
dhcp class ID: test

That last value is because I started fooling around with ipconfig and did:
ipconfig /setclassid "Local Area Connection" TEST
So now I am out of my depth. I do:
ipconfig /showclassid test
and get:
"the operation failed as no adaptor is in the state permissible for this operation", and I do:
ipconfig /showclassid "Local Area Connection"
and get:
"There are no classes defined for Local Area Connection". So... if neither of those worked, I'm guessing the dhcp is somehow involved? At this point, I am obviously pissing in the wind, since I don't even know which parameters to use for which commands, but I digress - I was explaining how I got the "test", but before I actually set that, I did ipconfig /release and got:
Autoconfiguration IP address: 169.254.xxx.xxx
...
which confused me, because I thought I at least understood this enought to think that releasing it should set it to 0.0.0.0. Which is where I started looking up ipconfig commands and trying unsuccessfully to figure this out. So, having given all of that, am I correct in thinking that the dhcp is not letting go of addresses somehow? All I know is that I can't even access my router through 192.168.1.1. I'm probably running around in circles here, missing something obvious, so if you've read this far, any input is much appreciated.

charonzen

[mbossman2]

i need to clarify 1 thing:

you added a hub to one of the ports on your router?
or
you replaced your router with a hub?

[charonzen]

Sorry, I added a hub initially, so that I went from modem to router to hub to NIC. However, one of the things that I (and later the ISP tech) troubleshot was gradually getting rid of all those peripherals. At this point I am connected directly to the modem and having the problems I described. Also, I should say that I have tried different cables as well. I have read that onboard Nvidia adaptors aren't all that, and that's what I have, but I tend to rule out both of these potential issues because, as I'd mentioned, I had a decent connection up until I started in with the hub.

(oh yeah and I disabled windows firewall and whenever I try pinging something I exist ZoneAlarm as well. Not sure if ZoneAlarm is leaving some kind of legacy setting upon exit to screw me up, but again, it was working before.)

thanks again for anything!

[charonzen]

oh yeah and one last thing. before I went to bed last night, after I initially posted, I reset the modem and got the LAC enabled. However, I'm still having all those problems, only now my LAC status reads as being connected with 0 packets sent/received.

[charonzen]

put the router back in the configuration and... nothing. still won't release ip address. that's it, I got nothing