Hi... This is an immensely useful forum... I just got my Dell DAR, and am hooking it up as I type this. Here's the problem I'm having though: My receiver gets as far as "Searching for Music" and then it turns off and back on... The Audio Manager Receiver icon in my tray is red, and never turns blue. My computer runs Win2k, and I have a cable/dsl router that serves as my DHCP server. I went into the properties for the Audio Receiver Manager and enabled auto configuration. Should I have done that? Can someone help me get this up and running? Dell tech support was less than supportive... Thanks!

Try assigning a fixed range that's within the range of addresses assigned by your DHCP server that doesn't conflict with existing addresses.

For example, let's say your DHCP server serves up IPs in the range of:

192.168.0.2
through
192.168.0.254
with a subnet mask of
255.255.255.0
and the PCs on your LAN are falling into line like this:
192.168.0.2
192.168.0.3
192.168.0.4
(...)

Then tell the AR manager to assign:

192.168.0.250 through
192.168.0.254
with a subnet mask of
255.255.255.0

See if that works.

Note: I'm assuming you're 100 percent ethernet, right? Not HPNA?


_________
Tony Fabris

yes, i'm all ethernet... should i be concerned that the audio manager icon never turns blue? or is that just a manifestation of the problem i'm already seeing?
i tried your suggestions, and i'm still having the same problem... the Receiver gets to "Searching for music," then it shuts off, restarts, and does the whole thing over again...
thanks for your generous assistance!

The red icon simply means that it never found any receivers to serve.

What's your cabling/hub scheme look like? You sure the cables and hub ports are all good? Have you tried simplifying the connection between the PC and the DAR to narrow down the issue? Such as going straight-crossover into the PC?

Also note: If all your hub/router/NICs are 100mbps without any auto-switch-to-10 capability, that could be your problem. The DAR is 10mbps only.


_________
Tony Fabris

my router/firewall is 10/100 autosensing... i have 3 PCs and the Receiver, all plugged into the router/firewall's 4-port switch... i haven't dug out the crossover cable yet...

Here's another thing to try...

Maybe it got a corrupted "first" download of its software. Pound on the power button a few times fast to force a cold reboot and a re-pull of the firmware from the server. See if that fixes it?

_________
Tony Fabris

Are you sure it's actually turning off?
I'm running a very similar set up.
I've had problems with the receiver not connecting (allways my fault) but it never turns off. It will usually show the ip address of the server it was trying to connect to along with the subnet mask abd the gateway ip address. The screen might go blank, but if you press the menu button you should see the error message. Also, try UNPLUGGING the DAR. It seems to do more of a full reset (for lack of better terminology)

Also, any firewall (zone alarm, norton) on the win2k machine?

i solved all my problems by turning off the DHCP server on my router/firewall, and assigning static IP addresses for all my machines... the DAR works fine now...weird...

The DAR should work properly in a DHCP environment. Maybe the problem was the AR Manager software trying to assign an IP address to the DAR when it already had one?

_________
Tony Fabris

This *sounds* like the DHCP client in the DAR getting upset with the DHCP server on your network. Try putting autoconfiguration on (enables the DAR server's DHCP server) and disconnecting the cable modem/router from the network to see if it works then. If it does, then the problem is the DHCP client (we've heard of another case of this recently too).

Can you tell me what make/model/version-nr your cable/dsl router box is?

Hugo

yahtzee! i fixed the problems by turning off the DHCP on my firewall/router, and giving all machines static IP addresses... thanks to everyone for their help...