Stupid question I'm about to ask, but is the Firewall disabled? Try doing that if that doesn't work, manually input some IP addresses and DNS Settings. If that works then there is something wrong not with the laptops, but with your DHCP. What kind of routing hardware are you using? Dell switches I hope. Post back with that info as well. I work for a school board as well and love my job. We're getting a 100Mbps WAN between all 40 locations this year, we've upgraded the whole shebang to Windows Server 2003, and we're setting a up a RIS and WSUS server now. Hopefully, with the exception of hardware issues, we won't have to step foot into the field again after this.
