[moved from vista]Computer no longer connects to the internet, "DHCP error".

[Sidbob]

Hello, this is my first thread, I joined so I could try and get this problem fixed.

I will get right down to it. I was installing some vista updates, as I have done a thousand times before, but this time my laptop crashed BUT I'm not sure when it happened because I was out of the room. After messing around with it for a while I managed to get it past the bios screen (it got stuck there a few times at first) and onto the desktop.

The connection I'm on is part of a University accomodation thing, I plug one end of the ethernet cable into the wall socket and the other into my laptop and all of the settings are automatic, it just "works".

I tried connecting to the internet after getting it to the desktop but it only recognised the connection as "local only", not internet enabled. I tried all the usual stuff, reboots, windows diagnostics etc and got my flat-mate to plug his laptop into my connection, it worked fine on his. I eventually did a restore-point to a couple of days ago and still nothing. Then I moved onto the command prompt and encountered another problem:

ipconfig /release - This worked as normal

ipconfig /renew - However this kicked up a fuss whenever I tried it and gave me this message:

"An error occurred while renewing interface Local Area Connection, unable to contact your DHCP server"

Now as I'm a student I can't afford to be messing about with this stuff so I did the only thing that I knew would work 100%, backup and restore to factory settings from the boot-disk.

Did all that and I STILL get the same damn message about the DHCP server. I have never encountered a problem in my entre life that persisted through a full reformat/reinstall of windows job and now I'm utterly lost.

Here is the info displayed on ipconfig/ all in command prompt:

Link-Local IPv6 Address: Fe80::457:ad91:e483:cc7a%8 (preferred)
Autoconfiguration IPv4 Address: 169.254.204.122 (preferred)
Subnet mask: 255.255.0.0
DHCPv6 IAID: 167779100

Thanks in advance for helping me.

PS. I'm on a computer in my library in case you were wondering

[Sidbob]

Bump, anyone?

[dai]

moved you to networking

[johnwill]

Closing duplicate, continue here: Vista connection issues, DHCP error