*confused* winXP network problem

[Peegee]

one of my roommies has a winXP (home edition, if it matters) computer that suddenly lacks internet access. Upon checking it, I found that the ip address is automatically assigned, and is not that of the network (ie: is not an internal ip). I tried to manually change the ip settings, but since the computer is not part of the network, I think all I did was set up an ip address that is independent of the network.

How do I fix this?

[wax]

Usually, with XP, you just leave the IP address blank. And I think there's an option along the lines of "let windows detect my network settings". If all else fails, you could just re-run the network setup wizard, it's never failed me when i comes to setting up a simple network with ICS

[Peegee]

I've tried both those tactics to no avail last night. I'm not sure why the router isn't 'routing'.

[wax]

We had a problem with our aDSL line, and it turned out that most of our problems were becuase we were using cat-6 and not cat-5.
Also, you may want to check all the cable for kinks or tears, my cable gets pinched sometimes and the network drops me like a bad habit.

[Endless]

Go to your local network setting on that machine, then open the tcp/ip properties, then set the IP yourself to one that is on the local network, with 255.255.255.0 as the subnet mask. Leave the rest blank.

Also check that the cables are correctly plugged.