Yeah... Most of it I could read, though I doubt it will lead to a solution. The bold sentence about ethernet addresses starting with 169 was Greek to me too.
Hi "TheMom." Just ignore the following paragraph. I'll get back to you in just a sec...
It's a Microsoft thing... APIPA - automatic private IP address. When a Windows computer is set to receive an IP address dynamically from a DHCP server, but for some reason no server is available, the interface will automagically assign an address like 169.xxx.yyy.zzz. If you ever see such an address, you know that the DHCP client can't get an IP address.
OK, back to TheMom. Every device on a network needs an address that uniquely identifies it. That address is called an IP address. But it can be a pain to manually assign a unique address to every computer on your network: It's easier to just set up a server to hand out unique addresses when your computer boots. This "server" is called a DHCP server (a server is something that provides a "service." Complicated huh? Although we talk about servers like they're computers, they can actually be a program running on your router as well. A Linksys router has such a server running on it. The service is called "DHCP," and the server is a program called a DHCP server that runs on the linksys router.) ANYWAY, if your computer can't get a unique address from a DHCP server, the computer will "make up" what it hopes is a unique address, and that address will look like 169.xxx.yyy.zzz, where xxx, yyy, and zzz will be numbers between 0 and 255. But the key is that first number. When you see a 169 there, you've got problems.
Mark
Help me!!!! Mark is still speaking Geek . . . I don’t understand. ;-)