Having trouble connecting to my campus hotspot

Hey guys hope you can help me out, yes its that "limited or not connectivity" time again.

Here's the deal, I've fresh installed my laptop (an Advent 7660M) with a new copy of windows XP pro SP2, installed all the new drivers for the "PRISM 802.11g wireless adapter" and turned on the WLAN switch to connect to our campus's new hotspots.

Now when i try to connect I get a "limited or no connectivity" bubble and I am unable to surf to any sites (including the one we need to logon to to get online)

I've run ipconfig /renew and it says "unable to contact your DHCP
server. Request has timed out." and ipconfig /all tells me that i have a IP address and a subnet mask but nothing else.

My internet options -> connections -> lan settings is set to automatically detect settings

when i specify my IP address then it says that it is connected however i am still unable to browse anything, the machine is reciving packets but it doesn't send any.

Anyone know whats going on with this thing? I've tried all the fixes and stuff you guys have said

 

Does your campus internet require specific software or a username/ password to join the network?
It sounds like it will not give you an assigned IP (DHCP server request timed out) without specific software or a username/ password login.
If you specifiy an IP, it still will not accept things without proper authentication as an accepted member of the network.

 

We have to log on using a browser, we have a factsheet on just how to get on there which doesn't really help at all. Its like its not giving me a username and password and i can't log in to get the username and password