Right so i have been wrestling with this for a while now, and i need some bright minds to take a look:
I have a Zyxel router acting as a DHCP server on my private network here in my flat. My laptop connects to the router through WiFi, it gets a local IP and has full internet access, also, it shows up on the routers "client list" and can connect to the routers config-page on 192.168.1.1.
Right, so my desktop is connected to the router by cable. The desktop has full internet access, but get this, it doesn't get a local IP. If i do an "ipconfig /all" it tells me the IPv4 address is my external IP, rather than some local IP in the 192.168.1.x range. Also, my desktop can not connect to the router config-page, and does not show up on my router client-list. Yet it still has full internet access.
Also, if i connect the laptop to the router by means of a cable rather than wifi, it still gets a proper local-ip, like it should. So, i called my ISP who supplied the router, and they told me that the problem was with my desktop, not with their router, and flat out refused to help me any further.
So, first off i tried removing the drivers for my network cards, and installing the latest version. Didn't help. Then i noticed that VirtualBox had created a separate connection and figured it might be screwing with things, so i removed the fake VB network card in the device manager, uninstalled VirtualBox and did an "ipconfig /renew /release", didn't help.
So after poking around on various MS support pages i tried resetting the TCP module by running: "netsh int ip" from the command line (Atleast thats what i think it did), didn't work.
And now im pretty much fresh out of ideas. Google is problematic in this case since there are a million hits on threads and questions from people who CAN connect to their router but not to the internet, while my problem is the reverse of that. Also i should just add that if i select the Ipv4 protocol under settings for my network card, it's set to obtain an IP automatically.
Normally this wouldn't be a problem since the machine has internet access, so i couldn't care less about it having a local IP, but i'm trying to run a Minecraft server for me and some friends, so i need to forward some ports and stuff, and this requires the desktop to be a part of the local network, which it seems it isn't at the moment.
Anyone have any ideas?
Edit: Both machines are running Windows 7 by the way.