Clients Cannot Obtain IP Addresses Because of Changed IP Address on DHCP Server

A DHCP server will only service requests for an IP address scope where the network ID (or Network Subnet) is the same as the network ID (Network Subnet) of its IP address. Make sure that the server’s IP address falls in the same IP network ID (IP Subnet) as the scope that it is servicing. For example, a DHCP server that has an IP address in the 192.168.0.0 network will not respond to requests for clients that had IP addresses in the 10.0.0.0 range. The clients must receive new IP addresses in the 192.168.0.0 range before successful communication will occur.

If a Windows XP client was on a network with a specific subnet, and then switches subnets, the XP client should try to contact its DHCP server first. If the DHCP is unreachable, the client should try to obtain a new IP address from the new subnet.

Using a Network Monitor, gather network traces from the client and server at the time of the failure. Using this data, you may be able to identify additional causes for failure, including the following: