169.254

My Windows XP laptop's wireless card got 169.254.x.x IP address again at work, but the LAN connection still worked. Then I came home. Both wireless and LAN connections got 169.254.x.x IPs. This kind of problem has happens like twice a year.

The fix suggested by Josh Marlino's comment at aaltonen.us seems to work by resetting winsock:

Start > run > cmd
ipconfig /release
ipconfig /flushdns
netsh int ip reset c:\tcp.txt
netsh winsock reset
then reboot.

But sometimes(like tonight), I had to restart my DSL modem, wireless router, and reboot my laptop multiple times to get back a valid IP.

Tags: 169.254 ip tcp winsock