dhcpd & WinXP

[Sam Couter]

Howard Lowndes <lannet at lannet.com.au> wrote:
> I can see the XP clients requesting DHCPDISCOVER and I can see the dhcpd
> server responding with an IP and other data DHCPOFFER, but the XP then
> fails to get the message and nothing happened, iow, there is no
> DHCPREQUEST and subsequent DHCPACK.

This is the same behaviour I've observed with every version of Windows
from Win95 to WinXP.

If the XP box previously had an IP address or DHCP lease, you may just
have to wait until it expires the pre-existing lease. I've found that
the Windows boxes like to think they know better than the DHCP server
and just keep sending DHCPDISCOVER packets looking for the IP address
they know they're supposed to get.

Eventually they get tired of that game and send a DHCPREQUEST for an
offered address. Eventually.

Reboots can sometimes speed the process along. If you can find the
magical file or registry entry where the Windows box stores the DHCP
lease, nuking that might help too. You might be able to use the ipconfig
command to clear the DHCP lease: "ipconfig /renew" or similar.

Moral of the story: Never ever allow a Windows box to grab a DHCP lease
with an expiry time that exceeds the limits of your patience.
-- 
Sam "Eddie" Couter  |  mailto:sam at couter.dropbear.id.au
Debian Developer    |  mailto:eddie at debian.org
                    |  jabber:sam at teknohaus.dyndns.org
OpenPGP fingerprint:  A46B 9BB5 3148 7BEA 1F05  5BD5 8530 03AE DE89 C75C
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