Not BSNL, Vista blues!

One thing about blogging about Linux is that it contrasts against Microsoft way of doing things. That is, Linux does things in a standard way but Microsoft keeps on contradicting itself.

Now, this one is about setting up the BSNL provided router to let wired access for PC and wireless access for laptop. I suspected BSNL and/ or UTStarcom's stupid router to be the culprit when I'd trouble with DHCP. (I did mention that I moved my PC to Ubuntu yesterday, but I'm still stuck on Vista for my laptop). The wireless adapter on the laptop wasn't getting a DHCP IP 192.168.1.x and somehow got some funny IP 169.254.205.173! Ergo, no LAN or WAN access. Instead, I'd to force a static IP on the laptop to access the router settings, force it to bridge mode and then dial up PPPoE from laptop! This pathetic setting would also mean that I can use either the laptop or the PC, basically one client at a time and also means on-demand connection from that client! I tried almost every setting with the router, including adding MAC filter for wireless access, but made no progress.

I knew there was something fishy about DHCP but didn't know what. So I began on that thread of thinking: why the hell does Vista get me a nonsense IP? Whats 169.254.205.173? Then I searched online on network classes to find that this is a fallback IP if everything else fails! How can DHCP fail for wireless/ Vista and still work for wired/ XP or wired/ Ubuntu? It turns out Vista was the culprit here with the wireless adapter not getting DHCP, it was falling back on 169.254.205.173 which was its autoconfiguration IP, a zeroconfig! More search online led to http://support.microsoft.com/kb/928233 which says "Windows Vista cannot obtain an IP address from certain routers or from certain non-Microsoft DHCP servers"... hmm, interesting, very interesting, note the words "non-Microsoft". What do you mean non-MS DHCP servers? Shouldn't you be saying Vista is non-DHCP OS in some way instead? Be as it may. :) The MS suggested solution is to add a DWORD32 DhcpConnEnableBcastFlagToggle flag set to 1 under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters\Interfaces\{GUID} where GUID is the network adapter that you want to Vistafy or Vis**-up! :)

I blog this only as a reference for some or even me if I go mad to come back and use Vista ever again. This might work for some, it didn't work for me. But taking hint from the MS article, I'd to finger wireless network properties to "connect even if the network is not broadcasting". This worked, yes! I got a clean DHCP IP and things seem good.