Question : Some of my wireless Vista clients don't get IP assigned via DHCP

I have a strange problem.  I have a couple of Vista laptop clients on my domain network.  My wireless network is built off of 3Com Wireless 8760 using the 803.11b/g interface using WPA-2 encryption.  My personal vista laptop and all my XP laptops work fine on it and has never had this problem.  But I have a user with a Dell Vostro with a 1390 WLAN Mini-Card in it.  The first time I tried to join the wireless network, I would put in my authentication key, and I would connect but get Limited or No activity.  I checked and it wasn't assigned IP or Gateway by my DHCP server like it normally would on my other clients, and it was on the 255.255.0.0 subnet (my network is 255.255.255.0 subnet).  Here's the strange part, when I manually configured the adapter with the IP settings it works, so that let me know its not the wireless AP's.  And if I plug the laptop into an ethernet port on my network, my DHCP server properly assigns it the correct values and it works.

Why can't my DHCP server automatically assign these Vista wireless adapters?  Is it a configuration in Vista?  Or on the wireless card itself?

Any help on this subject would be greatly appreciated!

Answer : Some of my wireless Vista clients don't get IP assigned via DHCP

normally to get around this i would just assign a static address and create an exception in DHCP to reserve the address for the system as i have also found vista wireless connections very flaky, in reserching this issue i came accross this KB article which is worth a look.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/928233

hope this helps.

Cheers.