Why doesn't my local area connection have a valid ip configuration?

Question

I started my computer today without being able to connect to the internet for some very odd reason. As the title says, that is the name of problem that Network and Sharing Center says on Win7.

It is weird though, because every time I troubleshoot the problem it cycles through two answers. One time it will be the name of the problem above, and the next time it will say that my perfectly fine Ethernet cable is not properly plugged in or may be broken. It also showed a 3rd problem, saying my Realteak PCIe GBE Family Controller (gigabyte Ethernet card) was bad so I reinstalled that and the error went away but not the problem.

I'm running Windows 7 64bit and connecting to the internet through a Ethernet cable obviously. My Linksys router is fine, and I'm using another computer in the house to type up this problem here.

> ipconfig /all

Windows IP Configuration

   Host Name . . . . . . . . . . . . : Luke-WIN7-PC
   Primary Dns Suffix  . . . . . . . :
   Node Type . . . . . . . . . . . . : Hybrid
   IP Routing Enabled. . . . . . . . : No
   WINS Proxy Enabled. . . . . . . . : No

Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection:

   Connection-specific DNS Suffix  . :
   Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Realtek RTL8168D/8111D Family PCI-E Gigab
it Ethernet NIC (NDIS 6.20)
   Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 48-5B-39-45-13-87
   DHCP Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes
   Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes
   Link-local IPv6 Address . . . . . : fe80::69e4:a47c:962d:10f7%11(Preferred)
   Autoconfiguration IPv4 Address. . : 169.254.16.247(Preferred)
   Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.0.0
   Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . :
   DHCPv6 IAID . . . . . . . . . . . : 189291321
   DHCPv6 Client DUID. . . . . . . . : 00-01-00-01-15-E4-B3-2B-48-5B-39-45-13-87

   DNS Servers . . . . . . . . . . . : fec0:0:0:ffff::1%1
                                       fec0:0:0:ffff::2%1
                                       fec0:0:0:ffff::3%1
   NetBIOS over Tcpip. . . . . . . . : Enabled

Answer 1

Do you have other computers to test this with? You should try to determine whether this is your router that is malfunctioning or whether it is your computer that has new recent problems.

For your router, you could try to install the latest firmware and when necessary try to reset/reconfigure it to make sure it's back in business. Make sure that DHCP is set up well, or you would need to give your computer it's own static IP address.

For your computer, try obtaining the latest network drivers and make sure the cable is properly connected. Resetting the adapter as well reinstalling any installed firewalls might or might not give a difference. As said before, if DHCP is somehow broken, you might consider want to use a static IP...