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Vista not working with DHCP
3 Feb2007
Just had my Dell Latitude D610 upgraded to Vista Enterprise. Smooth graphics, good speed, good security (small box pops up each time you do something like install apps or change settings, just like Linux) and the side bar’s pretty sweet too.
Even with all the above I still prefer my openSUSE 10.2 with XGL and Beryl, It makes Vista look like a kitten. What did they put into all the source code?
Personally I feel that Vista ain’t as user friendly as I expected it to be or as they claimed it to be. It’s hard to find what you need when you need it.
Hit my first bug when I got back. My Intel pro 2200 BG wireless connection was not getting DHCP lease from my IPCOP server. The weird thing was that my LAN card was fine and my wireless connection worked fine if I used a static IP.
Spent a whole night trying to feagure out the problem.Good news is I manged to fix it with some help from MS knowledgebase and a few registry tweaks. It seems to be a problem with the BROADCAST flag in DHCP discovery packets. In XP it’s off and in Vista it’s on. Non Microsoft DHCP servers don’t like this.
See the fix on the next page;
1. Start –> run –> regedit.exe
2. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters\Interfaces\{GUID}
3. {GUID} sub-key refers to the network adapter that is having the issue. In my case my Intel Pro 2200BG card.
4. Add a new DWORD (32bit) value and rename it to “DhcpConnDisableBcastFlagToggle”.
5. Modify the “DhcpConnDisableBcastFlagToggle” key and change the value to “1″.
6. Modify the “DhcpConnForceBroadcastFlag” key and change the value to “0″.
7. Reboot and test the connection again with DHCP. (The reboot is optional)
Read the full article at Microsoft
32 Responses to Vista not working with DHCP
alanbernard
February 6th, 2007 at 4:43 pm
hehe… what else do you expect from the ‘Softies. A lot of software and application incompatibilities as well, from what I hear. So far, it’s been complaints all round. Back to the drawing board?
Jack
October 2nd, 2007 at 5:11 pm
i try this is working now with my wireless linksys now
1)install the wireless driver
2)go to vista update
3) restart
now my wireless manage to get IP address form my DHCP server .
Cheer
alan
October 9th, 2007 at 3:06 am
still doesnt work 4me. It worked on my wireless-G adaptor on the same laptop though, dhcp ip was ok with the wireless but not the broadcom LAN (both are verified to have the broadcast flag off , with that nifty tool).
well, still it doesnt work.
Then i tried on another system with a fresh vista install. dhcp worked even with the dhcp broadcast flag on, with the same network.
so now what, inconsistent findings and very clear cut that it is not the DHCP broadcast flag causing incompatibilities.
have to do with drivers and the specific lan adaptors in this case.
note the LAN adaptor that worked out of the box without any tweaks on vista is a Intel gigabit onboard. well…
Jack
October 9th, 2007 at 4:15 pm
any one know how to configure my cisco 2950 switch with vlan ..?
the configuration here is mass ..
thanks alot ..
Jose EvansJ
October 15th, 2007 at 5:27 am
Thanks a ton it worked great!!
Danny
October 15th, 2007 at 8:58 pm
good to hear it worked for you Jose
Thorox
October 18th, 2007 at 3:51 am
Why does the MS Article say “DhcpConnEnableBcastFlagToggle” while everyone’s internet instructions say Disable? Further, why does the japanese language translation say “Disable”?
Talk about major confusion, and it didn’t fix the issue for me.
Doc
November 13th, 2007 at 1:26 pm
Can IPCop DHCP server be configured to support the broadcast flag? It seems to have extensive options available.
-Doc
Danny
November 13th, 2007 at 2:26 pm
Hi Doc, not that I know off but I will certainly look around to see if someone has done this before.
http://www.catonett.com/blog/archives/194
Doc
November 13th, 2007 at 3:31 pm
With IPCop’s extensibility, perhaps an add-on can be written that would provide the feature…
Nigel
December 25th, 2007 at 11:36 am
Thanks a ton for the info. Now my Vista is able to connect through LAN with my Zyxel router using DHCP.
I don’ know why microsoft has to make things so complicated.
mozy
January 23rd, 2008 at 4:28 pm
DhcpConnDisableBcastFlagToggle or DhcpConnEnableBcastFlagToggle?
Most of the confusion is based on MS Support web site, since they present different information for different languages.
As discussed by http://qkhx.com/ontherock/?p=4, some of the web sites use DhcpConnDisableBcastFlagToggle, while others DhcpConnEnableBcastFlagToggle.
I checked with Process Monitor (sysinternals tool) and Svchost process (in fact, the DHCP client service within) queries the registry key DhcpConnEnableBcastFlagToggle. There were no DhcpConnDisableBcastFlagToggle queries, where as the mentioned process queries DhcpConnForceBroadCastFlag and DhcpConnEnableBcastFlagToggle values.
Was that the solution of my problem? No! I still have problems with my wireless connection. Even worse, the problem is not related to DHCP; something before that (may be wireless authentication problem, or ARP problem …). Yet to be solved
j. rhew
May 20th, 2008 at 12:44 pm
Thanks a lot.
My laptop suddenly became unable to connect to the router. I didn’t know what to do. I followed the instruction and it works!!!.
I use DLink DI-614+ wireless router, which I had used for a long time ago, after the verizon FIOS router was broken and they charge $140 for a new one.
jung-hoon rhew
May 20th, 2008 at 12:50 pm
Thanks a ton!!!
I had to use my old router (DLink DI-614+) after my verizon FIOS router was broken and they charge $140 for a new one.
It worked for a month and suddenly became unable to connect the router. I tried different things and almost came to give up but this tip saved me a big deal!!!
Danny
May 20th, 2008 at 2:32 pm
Good to hear you got it working j.rhew
jung-hoon rhew
May 31st, 2008 at 11:04 pm
Danny,
After I fixed the issue following your tip, it stppoed working again (showing the same symptom before I tried the tip).
I checked the registry and the Dhcp settings were the same.
I restored them to default and set them again following the tip but it didn’t work.
I wonder if you have any idea.
Danny
June 1st, 2008 at 9:21 pm
j.rhew I don’t have a solution now as all my machines at home are either Linux or XP. Vista has been banned
Anyways, I’ll ask around for you
jung-hoon rhew
June 3rd, 2008 at 10:54 am
Danny,
Someone suggested registry clean for fix. I tried that and it worked.
I really don’t like Vista.
Thanks for your help.
Danny
June 3rd, 2008 at 10:39 pm
j.rhew, yo got it to work. Good…
I hated Vista the moment I laid hands on it. There’s just too much going on in it till it confuses people.
Anyways dude, thanks for sharing your fix. Will surely come in handy
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The Stench
July 10th, 2008 at 8:29 am
Thanks for the fix!
Rob
August 6th, 2008 at 9:30 pm
I believe I may have found the problem.
The nic on the vista machine showed the packets going out, but no reply from the xp machine. DHCP rfc’s 1533, 1534, 1541 and 1542 show that the dhcp ports are 67 and 68. (http://www.comptechdoc.org/independent/networking/guide/netdhcp.html of 6 Aug 2008). Wireshark confirmed vista was using these ports. I then went to xp start/settings/control panel/network connections and looked at local area connection 2 (shared) properties. This is the internet connection sharing nic which has the dhcp server attached. I went to the advanced tab and in the internet connection sharing area clicked settings. Services comes up and showed dhcp (67) and dhcp (68) unchecked. DNS also unchecked.(we had to previously manually insert the dns server entries) I checked them all, a re boot and bingo!
Since I made this change, my xp client pc also sends dhcp requests via ports 67 and 68 so I have no idea how the xp clients would have worked prior to the change.
I hope this helps.
Rob
Zaphod
August 23rd, 2008 at 6:39 am
You da MAN!!! Thank you for your suggestion, it worked a treat and so does DHCP (now!). Regards.
mee
September 4th, 2008 at 6:19 am
i tried the reg fix with o luck? any suggestions??.. T_T
ed
October 17th, 2008 at 2:09 am
Make this change on MS2k3 servers:
“DHCP server uses broadcast to respond to all client messages
The DHCP server uses broadcast to respond to all client configuration request messages, regardless of how each DHCP client has set the broadcast bit flag. DHCP clients can set the broadcast flag (the first bit in the 16-bit flags field in the DHCP message header) when sending DHCPDiscover messages to indicate to the DHCP server that broadcast to the limited broadcast address (255.255.255.255) should be used when replying to the client with a DHCPOffer response.
By default, the DHCP server in Windows NT Server 3.51 and earlier ignored the broadcast flag in DHCPDiscover messages and broadcasted only DHCPOffer replies. This behavior is implemented on the server to avoid problems that can result from clients not being able to receive or process a unicast response prior to being configured for TCP/IP.
Starting with Windows NT Server 4.0, the DHCP service still attempts to send all DHCP responses as IP broadcasts to the limited broadcast address unless support for unicast responses is enabled by setting the value of the IgnoreBroadcastFlag registry entry to 1 . The entry is located in:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\CurrentControlSet\Services\DHCPServer \Parameters\ IgnoreBroadcastFlag
When set to 1 , the broadcast flag in client requests is ignored, and all DHCPOffer responses are broadcast from the server. When it is set to 0 , the server transmission behavior (whether to broadcast or not) is determined by the setting of the broadcast bit flag in the client DHCPDiscover request. If this flag is set in the request, the server broadcasts its response to the limited local broadcast address. If this flag is not set in the request, the server unicasts its response directly to the client.”
Then run the DHCPBroadcastFixTool 1.2 on Vista clients.
This worked for me with 2k3 dhcp server, 1130ag Cisco APs, and vista w/ all updates.
Andre Jacob
February 26th, 2009 at 8:43 am
Excellent!!! Works like a charm – Bloody MS up to its tricks again….
thanks for your help!
Rob Evs
March 10th, 2009 at 6:27 am
Great job. Works a treat.
FYI Dell Studio Desktop / Vista SP2 / Linksys WCG200
James Martin
March 16th, 2009 at 3:14 am
Thanks alot for this fix, I was having connection issues on my girlfriends laptop and now she is able to get an IP through DHCP and has the Internet again
She says thankyou too!
James
Danesh
March 16th, 2009 at 10:30 am
James, glad to see i was able to help
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cY
April 1st, 2009 at 10:03 pm
thx alooot!!!
this finally fixed this stpd problem…
Corey
April 26th, 2009 at 4:20 pm
After lots of messing around, I found that this worked for me:
1. Added the registry keys as per the microsoft article
2. Ran the following command to reset the winsock catalogue:
C:\> netsh winsock reset catalog
3. Rebooted the machine. It’s been working fine ever since. See here.