Need Help Urgent! PC won't recognize IP Address

A couple days ago there was a big power outage where I live. Anyway my brother was playing a video game on our PC and when the power in the house came back on, he tried to get on the internet, but the computer is saying that it won't recognize the IP address. The thing the puzzles me is that my 2 macbook's both still connect to the internet fine, yet the PC after the outage won't connect. Anyone know why or how to fix this, I have a feeling it is just a setting on the PC because the computer itself is still working fine.

 

Has he tried restarting the PC? Otherwise there is a possibility that his network card got damaged during the power outage. I'm assuming this is a desktop?

 

go to Start->run... enter "cmd" (w/o quote marks) and, when the console window pops up, type in "ipconfig /all" (w/o quote marks) and then capture a screenshot and post it up so we can see how the NICs are currently configured.

Also, are you trying to connect to the internet via a wired or wireless connection?

 

It's entirely possible that there was a power spike due to the outage, which killed the network card. I've had power spikes get through my router and fry iffy network cards before. It may be worthwhile for you to go out and spend $15 on a replacement ethernet card and see if that fixes it. I'd be willing to bet that's the problem. Even if the hardware talks to the computer fine, the interface could still be fried.

 

That's a very good point. I haven't had a power outage, per se, blow components, but I have had a lightning strike kill a modem through the phone line before. But, is it more likely that the power spike came across the ethernet directly, killing the interface from that end, and if so, how likely is it that the router might be showing some damage as well, or is it more likely that the outage triggered a power surge within the computer itself, which killed the NIC from the inside?

 

It depends. Some hardware is just more robust than others. It didn't affect my router at all, but it blew the onboard gigabit ethernet link on my desktop. Hardware still tests out as fine from all the software tests I can do, it just won't connect to anything. Probably just a blown resistor or something, but it's enough that it won't work any more. Different components can handle different amounts of current and voltage spikes... sometimes one bit of hardware will pass it through just fine, and the other will die. Can't always tell what or why without some serious electrical engineering knowledge and spiffy tools that I don't possess

 

Even worse, it can vary among different individual versions of the exact same hardware, depending on, I suppose, what mood the assembly-line worker was in when your piece of PCB passed by his station.

I learned the hard way that the more surge/spike protectors you can put on anything that carries electricity, the better - I used to scoff at the surge protectors that had a separate line-in/line-out for phone lines and cable lines, not anymore.