Removing DHCP

[StuckInTexas]

I have an issue that I can't seem to resolve easily.

I have an XP system where the Ethernet Adapter Hardware ID (as listed in the registry under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters\Interfaces) can change due to different cards being placed in the system.

The current behavior is that when that HWID changes to a value that the system has never seen before, it defaults to DHCP. The problem is that I need that address to be static (ie 192.168.0.2), since there is no DHCP server attached to local network. It eventually sets itself to 169.254.0.x

This would be fine if the XP installation stayed on the system, but we periodically push images of the installation to the system. This would mean that I would have to create a new image for every HWID varient that we might see. This would be very time consuming.

I can create batch files that uses netsh to detect an autoconfigure IP and force the correct static IP. The problem is that when XP boots, the timeout for DHCP is pretty long 30-60 seconds. Then I have to wait for the static IP to attach, and then wait even longer for XP to re-establish the connection to the mapped drive that I use. All in all, this process takes about 1-2 minutes.

Questions:

Can I completely disable DHCP, so that any new adapter will default to either a static IP or no IP and not wait for a non-existant DHCP server? (I have already tried disabling the DCHP Service, but that did not help)

Is there any way to use IP Autoconfiguration, but define my own IP address? (I see how I can set this on a per interface basis, but not how to set a default for all interfaces.)

Requirements:

Yes, I have to use WindowsXP

Yes, I have to use images

[eyeball]

this may be totally stupid but, can you introduce a new dhcp server to the network and set DHCP reservations so that a paticular card is given the address you want it to have?

[Tripredacus]

YEs you can disable the DHCP Client service in Windows. You will see it in Computer Management.

You could create a .cmd (batch file) that runs when you boot the computer, and have that in your image of course, so after the image is applied and the computer restarts, it would set the IP for you, or whatever else you need it to do.

You can manually set IP information with Netsh

http://www.petri.co.il/configure_tcp_ip_from_cmd.htm

I do not know what effect disabling the DHCP Client service will have on trying to run netsh. Best to do a test in Audit mode before deploying.