[thelist] To reboot or not to reboot. That is the question.

[Michael Pemberton]

Chris Johnston <chris at fuzzylizard.com> wrote:

> Sam Carter wrote:
> 
> >Now and then when my cable-modem service goes down and I've had to resort
to
> >calling tech support to get it running again.
> > 
> >COMCAST (my ISP) insists that I power down my modem and my PC, then power
up
> >the modem first, and after it goes online, then power up the PC.
> > 
> >Is there an reason why the power down / up of the PC would do something
that
> >running IPCONFIG /RENEW  would not ?
> > 
> >Sam
> >  
> >
> If something has been corrupted in the tcp/ip - dhcp suite then 
> rebooting the computer will clear this. Whereas, using the /renew 
> command will simply try to renew your IP address still using the corrupt 
> file/memory space/etc. Basically, you are doing a hard reset of all your 
> networking protocols and bringing them up fresh.
> 
> Personally, using windows 2000, I have never been able to get the 
> ipconfig /renew command to work. The only thing that works on my 
> computer is to either disable/enable the network card or to reboot the 
> computer. I have had success using the repair command in XP though.
> 
> chris

My experience has been completely the opposite.  I use an ADSL modem that has
a built-in login client.  This means that it acts as a dhcp server.  This has
meant that even when I switched providers, I didn't have to reset my
firewall/router.  All I did was "ipconfig /release" and "ipconfig /renew".  I
didn't even have to reset my modem.  I just had to update the details.

The hardest part was writing a script to monitor for when Win2k allocates a
169.xxx.xxx.xxx IP address.  Once this happens, it stops checking for an IP
and just sits there.  I now have a small php script to tell me my IP and
verify that it is correct.

As for the original topic of helpdesk requesting you to perform this, it is
sometimes a ploy to fill in the time it takes for them to reset/check
something at their end.  This is also a good way of making sure that the user
has eveything plugged in correctly.

---
Michael Pemberton
evolt at mpember.net.au