router question
 

My buddy gave me a linksys router (used) that I just plugged into my modem, and for 3 days I had excellent signal strength and connection.

Now on the 4th day I can't access the internet with it. Signal strength is still excellent, but it says I have an invalid IP address. I hit the repair button in the windows prompt to no avail.

This is probably a no brainer but I've said it before, I'm a pooter dumb dumb.

The first thing you want to do it reset the router by holding the small reset button for 5 seconds or more. Try that first and report back. :)

Turn off router and turn on again - My netgear is the same - LOL

thanks. I'm in bed so I can't get to it till tomorrow(damn paralysis) but that should fix it cause all I did was just plug it in before and it worked. If it doesn't I'll get the BFH and work on it.

It worked! A buddy showed up and unplugged and replugged the router for me. Thanks guys.

Linksys has a toll free help number, if you get a english speaking agent they'll help you through any problem you can't fix with help from friends or members.

You still gonna wanna press the red button in the back and hold it for 30secs+ to reset te internal memory otherwise your internet will keep droping out, hada similar issue last week. In my case I had set up mom n pops router and it used my laptops IP address and when I came home my router was trying to use my ip address, so the ISP was having a conflict betwen the 2 routers, and in your case since you got the router used it may still have your buddys ip on it which will make your connection coneect and disconnect like a mofo. Hopefully I didn't confuse you and you understood all that.

My linksys sometimes stops responding like that. If resetting the router and modem (just by powering off and back on) doesn't work right away, you can force the PC to acquire a new IP by opening a command prompt and typing:
And then:
BTW: When you reset the router by using the reset button, it also resets the router login password to the default when you got it. Hackers can then easily access it and do all kinds of stuff, so either change the password again, or try to avoid doing this. This type of reset also erases any special setup parameters you may have entered.

For instance, in my setup, I have a 4 port wired router/switch, and a 4 port wired router/switch with wireless capability. I daisy chained them to act as one large router/switch. But, only one DHCP server can be running on the same network, so I disabled the DHCP and the router function on the wireless one and just use the wired one as the actual router and DHCP server (because it has a more robust router). I've never had to use the reset button, but if I did, it would wipe all those changes out.

You might also want to check the manufacturer's website for any firmware changes. Maybe they found a bug and have fixed it.

I would check what firmware the router is running and see if there is a newer version of released on linksys website.. Sometimes it helps with these kind of issues..

If it happens again and you still have good signal strength to the router, you might just need to reset the connection between your router and your internet modem. I have to do this fairly regularly.

You can do this through the GUI on your laptop without having to leave your bed. Just type the IP address of the router into your browser and log-in to the router. The option to reset should be in there somewhere.

Grab the manuals for both the router and the modem and go through the setup properly on both setting up security etc how the manuals suggest. If you can give us the models of the router and modem we can give you a good detailed setup to follow. It shouldn't just drop out like that and it sounds as if something isn't right. Could be something like brian said that you have 2 dhcp servers running on the same network but it's unlikely.