Tech Forum

we had to do a restore on a fhc computer. the computer is back up, renamed to its original name, and configured with fhc setup. the computer will not connect to the building's network, and so it will not get an ip address, which results in not being able to complete the central identification. How do I get this computer back onto the building network to get an ip address? Thanks.

Things to check:

• Make sure the NIC isn't disabled in the BIOS.
• Make sure you're connected to a live network jack and have a good (not crossover) cable.
• Look for a link light - usually as part of the connector.
• Check to see if you have the drivers loaded for the NIC and it appears in device manager and is not disabled.
• Make sure there isn't some manual settings for the NIC that's preventing it from working.

The NIC is active and has its drivers, the wall port is live (I also tried the adjacent port from a working system), the cable is good, connection lights are flashing.

There is no documentation about having to do anything specific after restoring a computer so that it can connect and be served a DHCP address. This leads me to think the standard process is you just plug in the network cable after the restore completes and it should get an IP address and be online, but that's not the case it seems.

The question becomes is the system sending and receiving packets? If not then it could the driver for the NIC.

Do you know how to go into the network properties, look at the adapter and check the settings?

The machines seems to send and received packets. the problem is it has a 169 address since it is not being served an address via the dhcp. Device manager has no complaints about the nic and its driver. the restore process re imaged the machine configured as an FHC computer thus all drivers are baked into this image.

Yes I am able to get to the network properties. I compared settings with a working machine and all settings are the same.

The question I have is, is there a specific procedure or steps to get a machine online in the FHC, or can you plug any computer into a wall port in the FHC and it will get online?

Assuming no one has done a custom install, any machine should work with any working jack. You might adjust the nic so it's not trying to connect at 1Gbit. Auto negotiation does have its quirks.

24hrs later the computer just connected to the network. Nothing was done to the computer, it just sat over night. It then took 5 tries to fill out the central identification before it took. Is the church system this slow that things take 24hrs to be allowed to connect and communicate with the system? It would be nice to know so I don't waste hours over something that can't be controlled.

marcfromm wrote:we had to do a restore on a fhc computer. the computer is back up, renamed to its original name, and configured with fhc setup. the computer will not connect to the building's network, and so it will not get an ip address, which results in not being able to complete the central identification. How do I get this computer back onto the building network to get an ip address? Thanks.

When you say "get an ip address" you imply that the computer is using DHCP, rather than a static IP assignment. Can you confirm that?
Whether it is using dynamic or static IP assignment, it is always possible for an IP address conflict to exist on your local network. That is even more likely if it was using a static IP address from the image you restored that duplicates a static IP address of another computer on your network.