Comments on: Acquiring Network Address

By: ADANE

ADANE — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 19:13:32 +0000

One final posting. When I completely updated the XP system with all Windows Updates, the problem went away for good.

By: ADANE

ADANE — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 17:35:16 +0000

I spoke too soon. I have 3 laptops that can run wireless. I was only having problems with 1. As soon as I rebooted that one, it went right back to the same old problem. Curious. So more work is required.

By: ADANE

ADANE — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 17:14:07 +0000

I’m sure he won’t read this because his posting is so long ago but the_duck’s suggestion rescued me. I have spent days on this, rebuilding systems, etc. I was stuck on acquiring network address. So I changed the router to Security-Disabled and set 3 wireless computers to Open. They all connected. Then I changed the router to the Security I wanted and was able to connect with all three with the new security. Sometimes the simple suggestions do the job.

Thanks again to the_duck

By: Keshan

Keshan — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 09:48:19 +0000

Dude Thanks for the help tcip stuff worked

By: Ray

Ray — Sun, 27 Feb 2011 15:17:52 +0000

Got a Belkin usb wireless adaptor with a linksys router. All other machines worked fine except one which hung on “Acquiring Network Address”. Spent hours (possibly days) trying to figure it out and eventually gave up about a year ago.

Then accidentally found this site and Ivan Rodriguez’ suggestion:
-Go to:
Control Panel – Administrative Tools – Services; make sure TCP/IP NetBIOS Helper and DHCP Client services are started

Ivan, THANKS A MILLION. All works fine

By: Pranav

Pranav — Sat, 29 Jan 2011 11:40:03 +0000

Hi,
the DHCP did not work for me. However, another rahter simple approach solved it. I ran my internet explorer 8 and typed an address in. it obviously could not connect but offered to diagnose the connection problem. Running through its steps, the helper reported back that it was unable to fix the problem, when in fact it had! hope this helps someone. Cheers!

By: Liverbird

Liverbird — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 19:04:52 +0000

@ Justin,

on the last laptop that cannot connect have you deleted all old wireless profiles and started from scratch? (see my post further up for steps on how to do this)
*Be sure it is YOUR network it is trying to connect to and not a neighbours similarly named network.

Also try with encryption disabled … in router setup turn off the need for a password to connect to the router … if you can then connect re-enable but try an alternative option; example wep/wpa etc

Try a winsock repair ..just google for the steps.

Temporarily disable firewall .. check firewall logs for signs of connection being blocked etc.

Perhaps a driver update for the network card as a last resort.

By: Boxy

Boxy — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 20:27:17 +0000

Managed to solve it in the end thanks people, PASSWORD is case sensitive and instead of telling you “invalid password” or “wrong password” it just says “aquiring network” which is no use to anybody!

feel like a bit of a tit now! only spent about 20hours in total of my life trying to get back online.

By: Rich

Rich — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 18:48:20 +0000

I had an issue with an XP machine SP3 always “acquiring address” and found that the automatic NetBIOS over TCP was set to default in the TCP/IP connection settings under “advanced” button WINS tab NetBIOS setting.

Set this to “Enable NetBIOS over TCP/IP” instead of “Default”

Note: You might want to disable “LMHosts” if you aren’t using it. If this is checked nd no LMHost file exists it could cause delays in the query process.

By: justin

justin — Sun, 17 Oct 2010 19:33:43 +0000

I literally went thru all of the advice in this extensive thread (thanks for those who offered help) and i am still having the same issue.

A household member recently got a new laptop with windows 7. Before this the two existing laptops and one desktop all running win xp all worked at the same time. All from the wireless router, no problems.

Fired up the new laptop with win7 and it knocked out all the other computers.

Ended up getting a new router and it managed to get the desktop and other laptop as well as the new laptop all working fine with each other but my personal laptop is giving me the ‘aquiring network address’ that never aquires it.

It detects our wireless network but it just hangs on the ‘aquiring network address’ bit

I am at a loss as to what else to try.

Any other ideas?

Thanks