Why have I got a IP Conflict Problem?

Question

This morning I started my home computer from habitation and immediately got the “IP conflict” from windows, my concern is that my computer is not on a network and I have other devices currently connected to the Wireless internet. Does this mean my computers has been hacked or cloned?

For your information it is an Acer laptop running windows vista and AVG virus software.

Look forward to hearing for anyone that can help soonest

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

Nothing to worry about.



Just reboot your computer.



Here's how it works:



When your router sees a device on your LAN it assigns it an IP address from it's available range using a process called DHCP



When you hibernated your computer, the router released the IP address back into the pool. When the router saw another device on your network it gave it this address.



When you restored your computer out of hibernation it still had the old IP address which the router had subsequently assigned to another device. Thus, you get a IP conflict.



Some routers will let you reserve IP addresses for specific computers by specifying the unique MAC address of the computer. You could use this feature to eliminate this from happening if the future if it bothers you.



Good Luck

Answer 2

You are using a Network connection for internet access - it may be wireless rather than wired, but it's still Ethernet & still networking, even if you are not sharing files over it.



Your Router allocates an IP address to each device when the device is turned on (or it's WiFi switch is turned on).



If some device is remembering that IP address whilst off or asleep, and another device is given the same address by the router (as it appears to be unused at that instant), you may get a conflict message when the sleeping device is turned back on.



Another possibility is if any device has been set to use a fixed IP address, rather than an auto-allocated (DHCP) address, but the router DHCP settings have not been changed to limit the range of addresses it's handing out.



In that case, the router could give an address to one device while that same address is already in use as a fixed IP on another device.



Make sure either every device is set for DHCP, or adjust the router DHCP range to addresses in the range eg. x.x.x.100 to x.x.x.240 and use x.x.x.10 upwards for fixed IPs, so there cannot be any overlap.



(The x.x.x. is whatever network range the router is using at present, such as 192.168.1.).

Answer 3

If your computer isn't connected to a network then you have 0 ..yes ZERO security concerns. Well unless your room mate is a terrorist.



This is purely because it may have been connected previously or something is configured on a interface, where it should all be auto-configured when you do actually connect the machine.



If this computer is not connected how does it have any knowledge of the other machines, they are a separate entity.

Answer 4

No it just means that some other device on the network might be using the same IP. You can dedicate an IP to your computer so that you utilize a different unique IP.

Answer 5

Hi,



It sometime means you're hacked. But this is not hacking solution is just reboot or if you're scared get a antivirus

Answer 6

do you have virtual IP

192.168.1.4 ????? for example ??



if yes you can change it to something else