A.C. not releasing last IP address

[pjk]

With the latest release of Access Connections, I see periodic problems when changing location profiles.

The IP address used in the last profile will "stick" - even if if says the newly applied profile was applied successfully, it does not update the IP address (either dynamic or static), and you get no connectivity.

I usually have to run through some combination of rebooting multiple times, using "IPCONFIG /RELEASE" "IPCONFIG /RENEW" etc, and _eventually_ it works.

Anyone have a quick fix for this? The Thinkpads in question (T4x, T6x, X41, X61x) are typically running XP-SP2.

TIA

[bill bolton]

Anyone have a quick fix for this?.

Its not at all clear, from the very terse description, what you are actually doing, and what impact that may be having on your connections.

However, based on past expereince, if you are using any fixed IP addresses, you should have a look at the FAQ in the AC Help file FAQ and pay attention to the sections which describe what does, and doesn't, happen when you nominate a fixed IP address for a connection.

Cheers,

Bill B.

[pjk]

Its not at all clear, from the very terse description, what you are actually doing, and what impact that may be having on your connections.

However, based on past expereince, if you are using any fixed IP addresses, you should have a look at the FAQ in the AC Help file FAQ and pay attention to the sections which describe what does, and doesn't, happen when you nominate a fixed IP address for a connection.

If by "AC FAQ" you are referring to this:

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=45564

..then yes, I have read it, as well as the AC help info within the app. I don't see anything in there about the specific issue you cited other than someone's unanswered question.

I have been using AC for at least 4-5 years on many different Thinkpads, my own personal ones as well as client machines. The original 4.x releases were buggy as hell, which is why my personal T43 still runs 3.71.

The 4.x version on the X61s or X41 where I have seen these problems most frequently isn't perfect, but it's OK. But when it decides to hang onto the old IP address it causes me a lot of support headaches when the user is on the other side of the globe from me.

If there is some additional info that will help, I'll be glad to provide it. I just don't write novels on web forums until at least I have some idea someone is reading what I'm writing.

Thx, Phil

[skanky]

i sometimes get this problem on my t60 where it seems like where at some point during hibernate/standby process, it holds onto the ethernet port's assigned IP and doesnt release it so when it powers back on, it tries to use the same IP but fails then has to switch to wireless which is annoying.

im using the latest AC (v442?) and latest wireless/ethernet drivers available for vista.

[bill bolton]

If by "AC FAQ" you are referring to this:

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=45564[

The FAQ is in the Help File of the Access Connections application.... as indicated previously!

Cheers,

Bill B.

[pjk]

The FAQ is in the Help File of the Access Connections application.... as indicated previously!

As expected, I now have a traveling user on the other side of the globe from me who is crippled by this problem.

AC is holding onto the static IP for the ethernet interface associated with a different ethernet profile and will not let it go.

No amount of restarting, connecting/disconnecting AC profiles, ipconfig /release, /renew, etc, will allow the profile with plain Ethernet/DHCP to find a DHCP server and acquire an IP address.

I don't have access to the program helpfile because I don't have that version installed here and the tools I have cannot extract it from the self-executing installation file.

I would have the user temporarily and manually configure TCP/IP parameters in the network control panel, but they do not have admin privs so they cannot do this.

If someone has some real tips for me on this, I would appreciate it. Or if you know a way to get help from someone at Lenovo who has an actual clue about these kinds of AC idiosyncracies, that would work too. (mostly I've found that their support reps are ignorant about this sort of thing)

Thanks.

[pjk]

I have now spent several hours tracking down and installing special (covert) utilities so that I can extract files from proprietary Installshield .CAB files. (necessary to extract the help file from the ACC self-extracting installer .EXE)

I have browsed and searched all throughout the help files from versions 4.23 and 4.42, and cannot find anything in those files that addresses this issue, as Bill suggested.

If someone would like to provide more specific info, I would appreciate it.

[boofoo]

I can't help you, but I have a similar problem that took a long time to diagnose. At work, I need to use a fixed IP address, so I have a profile set up for that. At home, I use a wireless or wired DHCP connection, so I have a profile for that as well.

I started to have problems with my home wireless network: I could sometimes connect to the router, and use DNS, but not reach any sites outside the LAN (ping gave the helpful message "Hardware error"). Then I discovered that the problem was, as you describe above, that AC was not releasing the fixed IP address for the Ethernet connection. Somehow, this prevented even a wireless connection from working correctly: it tried to go through the wired connection, even though no Ethernet cable was plugged in.

The solution is to manually go into the network setting for the wired connection (NOT through AC) and change it to a DHCP address. Once that happens, the system realizes there's no wired connection and everything goes through WiFi.

This does seem to be a flaw in AC. I've tried changing my wireless-only connection at home to a "Best Available Network" one, using DHCP for the wired connection, but that didn't help. I've also tried creating a DHCP wired profile and "connected" to it first, in the hopes that it would clear the network settings, but to no avail. It's definitely something Lenovo ought to fix.

My fix only works because I'm an admin user. To workaround this problem for non-admin users, one solution would be netsh scripting.

[pjk]

My fix only works because I'm an admin user. To workaround this problem for non-admin users, one solution would be netsh scripting.

Thanks for your input on this. I can give the user a list of commands to enter in a console window easily enough, it's just time consuming. But we don't have many other alternatives - he's in Korea and I'm in California..

My next challenge is to figure out what the ethernet adapter name is without the computer in front of me. Maybe if I have a backup of the registry somewhere at hand (at the office, of course)...

[Kyocera]

my fix for access connection problems has alway been to get rid of it. Unless you have a hard and fast rule to use it in your environment you can uninstall and let windows manage your wireless networks. I too have seen this problem and many others associated with AC.

[pjk]

Here is the command I am going to try:

Code: Select all

netsh int ip set address local dhcp

Another option is the long version:

Code: Select all

netsh int ip set address name="Local Area Connection 2" source=dhcp

However I noticed on my current wifi/dhcp connection, if I tried to set the interface to "static", what I got instead was an "0.0.0.0" address, then ACC seemed to force it back to DHCP mode.

It may be enough to just jolt ACC into resetting the interface - since the current profile already has DHCP set.

Crossing fingers...

[RealBlackStuff]

If your user is allowed to install a new program, perhaps CableNut might be able to sort him out
http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=446
do NOT download from the Author's Site, it is either down or extremely slow.

[boofoo]

Thanks for your input on this. I can give the user a list of commands to enter in a console window easily enough, it's just time consuming. But we don't have many other alternatives - he's in Korea and I'm in California.

You could try a batch script to make the process slightly easier.

[pjk]

You could try a batch script to make the process slightly easier.

Well I will definitely consider that in the future - problem is I can't exactly send him a script file when he has no connectivity.

So here's what I learned today: netsh is of no use to someone with only "user" level privs - attempting to use that to reset the connection parameters gives an "access denied" result. Lovely.

So I had him login as admin (I probably have to change the password now - PITA) and netsh solved the problem the first time.

I am going to see if I can use a utility to run the netsh script as admin ("Encrypted RunAs" - allows you to run something as admin without giving the user the PW) - hopefully it will work that way as a one-off command and not require completely logging-in as admin.

Thanks again to those who have been making suggestions.

(Oh and BTW - I did call Lenovo last night, and they were clueless as expected. "Never saw that problem before", etc etc. I've come to realize that a huge number of issues I have with software products are simply because I use best practices and do NOT have users login with admin credentials - but most vendors never bother to test or design for anything other than users logging in with admin credentials..)

[pjk]

If your user is allowed to install a new program, perhaps CableNut might be able to sort him out

Thanks for the suggestion, but it appears that development on that app stopped in 2001, and the most recent OS it recognizes is W2K.

I think I can solve the problem with a netsh script, I'm going to be doing some testing with that under user level privs shortly..

[pjk]

One of the interesting things I discovered recently, is that AC seems to use DHCP even when it's set for a static IP.

I noticed in the logs of a network router recently that a Thinkpad (using AC 4.52) plugged-in, set for static IP, was actually sending DHCP requests to the router, asking to "renew the DHCP lease" for the "static" IP address it was set to!

This may shed some light on why it has these weird problems "holding on" to static IP's sometimes.