Really interesting problem

[Boston_Bob]

Hi guys,

I have a problem I kinda doubt anyone will have an answer for, but i thought I'd give it a shot anyway.

Here's the deal. At work I have a number of Windows 98 machines, all of them are having the following problem. It is all related to DHCP, but please keep in mind for business/political reasons I cannot touch the DHCP server and only know that it is some form of Windows, all else is a mystery to me.

Anyhow, when the machines are fisrt put on the network they grab a lease for 5 minutes. The IP pool they grab the first lease through is behind a firewall and cannot reach anything but our internal servers. This is done in order to gather some information from the user and register them before they are granted full internet access.

After they are done with registering they must release and renew their address in order to get an unrestricted IP from the second range. In 98 we have found it is most reliable to just shut it down and let it reboot.

Heres the problem. 98 has a registry key and options coded into the registry under the key (among others) "DhcpDesiredIPAddress" followed by a hex equivalent of an IP. It is always the last IP it received via DHCP. In our case it is always a restricted IP behind the firewall. The DHCP server is honoring this request and giving out a restricted IP to those who are registered already. Remeber I cant change the server at all.

Does anyone know of a guide to Windows 98 registry settings for DHCP? Does anyone know if I can edit the key "DhcpOptions" and what the vaules following it might do? I know I should be able to turn off this option that requests a certain IP but cannot find any resouce on it. Any help would be greatly appreciated

Bob

[cyberskye]

Give this a shot.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.as ... us;Q217035

Skye

EDIT: As you can see from the article, the current behaviour may be desireable under most circumstances. I think the last paragraph touches on this point.

[Boston_Bob]

Yeah,

Ive read this and tried it. No luck, doesnt clear the registry entries that request the same IP the next time it goes to DHCP. I dont think Microsoft has any documentation on this issue and I was hoping someone had something unofficial or had played with the registry entries pertaining to DHCP on 98 before.

Thanx anyway though