I have 2 computers that access the internet via wireless. It's a router that the cable company supplied. It's been working fine for quite some time.

I got home and one of my computers lost the connection. It is a windows 8 computer and it kept telling me "limited connection". I googled this and did a lot of stuff including unchecking the save power checkbox and uninstalling the driver. Nothing worked.

My other computer (windows 7) worked just fine.

After trying everything I could think of and googled, I unplugged the router and let it reset. Doing this didn't make any sense to me but I did it anyways just to do it.

When it came back up, the windows 8 machine was now accessing the internet perfectly fine. However, now the windows 7 machine cannot access the internet. Additionally, there is a message that says "Another computer on this network has the same IP address as this computer. Contact your network administrator for help resolving this issue. More details are available in the Windows System event log."

I am completely baffled.

Help

it sounds like one of your computers may be configured for DHCP while the other may be configured with a manually assigned IP address. i'm assuming that your router is running DHCP, so (assuming that is indeed the case), you should configure both computers to "obtain an IP address automatically".
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/w...#1TC=windows-7

Thanks. I checked all that and it seemed fine.

I rebooted the windows 7 computer and all is well. I guess I just needed to reboot everything.

I blame gremilins!

All the settings on your computer should be set to "obtain ip address automatically" unless told otherwise by your ISP.

No one should ever be told so anymore. This isn't DSL in the mid 90's we're talking about here. His PCs are connected to a wireless gateway. For cable internet. They should all be dhcp.

OP, if you want to fix the issue again in windows, try bringing up the command prompt and typing 'ipconfig /release' and pressing enter, then 'ipconfig /renew' then enter. You can find command prompt by hitting the windows key + r and typing 'cmd', or just hit the windows key and type 'cmd'. (No quotes for any of this)

For connection issues, it basically accomplishes the same thing as restarting, only way quicker.