Wireless connection problems - Router or Windows issue

[WinstonG]

I have come across this several times in the past few weeks and it's all over the web. We have a small business and about 8 laptops at any given time. We have home connections and we also travel. We started upgrading our laptops and are having connection issues with wireless. Many are blaming the routers. Here is what I found after several days of investigating. The laptops are all Wndows 7 and one Vista all show the same issue. They cannot get an IP but when I look in the router config, an IP address was leased out to the laptop's wireless MAC. Another effect that has me scratching my head is that when I try to connect to a wireless network, it frequently takes out the network (even hardwired connections drop). I shut my radio off and a few seconds later, everyone is back up. It's like the router gets totally confused. Router log shows that router keeps sending IP offer but no response from laptop. Same for windows 7 and Vista.

 

[thiggins]

I have come across this several times in the past few weeks and it's all over the web.

How about some links?

 

[WinstonG]

How about some links?

links.
google (Windows 7 wireless problems, windows 7 wireless no IP, windows 7 no Internet access) this will get you many results. A detailed reading points to a similar cause for a lot of them and not yet resolved. I did a lot of investigatingWindows 7 machines taking on the internal IP before accepting an offer from the router. I have run NETMON to capture wireless only on 2 laptops (one XP and one W7) in three seperate wireless environments with routers of varying age from 3 years old to less than 6 months.

What I found is that the XP machine broadcasts its DHCP Request first thing when I turn on the radio and accepts an offer within about 10 network transactions. Nice and clean.

The W7 Machine however, records a great deal of router broadcasts on top of the actual negotiation traffic. I attached a Netmon capture. Perhaps someone with more wireless traffic experience can see what might be wrong?