Conflict for IP address with the system

[montanafan]

I've been having a problem with this off and on almost all year and thought that maybe one of you could finally help me.

A couple of months into the beginning of the year the principal gave me a really nice Sony Vaio system that had been in another teacher's room (that teacher moved to Florida). Most of the time everything works fine, but occasionally I can't get on the internet with it because I get this message at start up: "The system has detected a conflict for IP address......with the system having hardware address.... The interface has been disabled".

I have to shut it down and then start it back up some time later and hope that it doesn't deny me internet access until it feels like it some time later.

I've asked the computer class teachers here and they don't know what to do about it and I've also had the regional technology guy in to look at it and I thought he had fixed it, but it did it again today.

Anyone know what the problem could be and how I can go about remedying it?


P. S. I'm using ME on that system.

[homer15]

how are ip's assigned at your school? static or dynamic? if you have a static ip, and for some reason everyone else is getting their's through a dhcp server, the same ip might be used by two computers, you follow? as around to see how your network was setup.

[TheOldMan]

montanafan,

The message means there is another device/computer on the network with the same address. If you start your computer and the other one happens to already be on, you will get this message. If the other one is off at the time you start, you will not get the message and will be able to connect to the internet.

Tracking the conflict down can be a pain and depends on how IP's are assigned. If the numbers are static, someone SHOULD have a list of assignments. Judging from what you said about the regional tech guy, though, that may not be the case.

If the numbers are assigned dynamically, there may be an issue with the DHCP server. Try this:
- open a command prompt/DOS window
- type "ipconfig /all" without the quotes
- look for a line that says "DHCP Enabled" and see if it says "yes" or "no"

If it says "yes", tell your tech guy there is a problem with the DHCP server.
If it says "no", wait until you get the message again, then have someone else [not your computer] open a command prompt/DOS window and type
"ping xx.xx.xx.xx" without the quotes and replacing the x with your IP address. You should get a reply like this
Pinging www.yahoo.akadns.net [64.58.76.228] with 32 bytes of data:

There may [or may not] be some indication of the machine name that currently has that address.

Hope that helps.
The Old Man

[montanafan]

Sorry I didn't come back to this thread sooner, but once school goes out, I try not to think much about it for a while.

It turned out that you were right about it being a static IP and that the room the Sony was originally in was interfering with it in mine. It hadn't been a problem at the beginning of the school year because that teacher was on leave and there was no one using a computer in that room.

I didn't get it sorted out before the end of the school year, but I did put in a written reguest for a second IP so that I wouldn't get the interference anymore. I hope that'll take care of the problem.

Thanks guys for the information and advice.