Resolved Can Neither Ping Nor Remote Desktop Into a Particular Server

Dears,

I have a machine running windows server 2003 enterprise on my network that I have always connected remotely into but when I tried to connect today, I could not. I pinged the machine from different machines but they all timed out. I can successfully ping and connect remotely to other machines from this particular machine.
After a short while, I noticed IP Conflict pop up and on checking the event viewer, I was able to get the MAC address of the PC that was causing the IP conflict. I went to the DHCP and found the IP of my server assigned to this MAC address but on checking the PC that had the MAC, a different IP was assigned. Meanwhile my server IP is static. I disconnected the PC from the network and deleted the lease an restarted my server but the problem remained the same.
I changed my server's IP to a known free IP but it was registered as a BAD_ADDRESS on the DHCP and I still received the IP Conflict pop up and still can neither ping nor remote desktop into another PC from this server.
A quick response will be highly appreciated.

 

The static IP address you have assigned to your server needs to be excluded from the DHCP range. Alternatively you can reserve the IP address for use with only the server's MAC. Personally I alway create a separate area in my IP range for static IPs, but the reservation technique also works.

Have a look in the DHCP help for "DHCP exclusion ranges" and also "reservations" for information on these techniques and how to use them.

However, I'd also check that there isn't another system giving out IP addresses - that is another DHCP server on the network. For example, routers often have a DHCP service enabled as default. You may need to do some packet sniffing to detect another DHCP server. Wireshark is the usual tool to use to see the packets and detect what's send things where.

 

Thanks for your wonderful feedback. Actually I have a range of IPs excluded from distribution and that of my server belongs to it though in the process of troubleshooting this problem, I had to switch the server to dynamic just to let it pick up a free IP and then made the IP static.

Meanwhile, the issue is resolved and it was as a result of the firewall on the server that was started. Everything started working fine the moment I stopped the firewall.

Wilfred.