That damn 169.254.x.x IP address has caused me more headaches than I care to count. Here’s how I turn it off:

  1. Open up registry and go to HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters.
  2. Add REG_DWORD of IPAutoconfigurationEnabled with a value of 0 (zero.)
  3. REBOOT!

 

Seriously, you can also apply that command down @ the adapter level too. Typically when I’ve got a problem w/ APIPA I’ve got a bigger issue but can’t see it yet. As an example, once I turned off APIPA on a laptop I could see that the OS just didn’t like the static IP address I was trying to configure it with. Once I changed the IP to something different, it worked just fine. GO FIGURE!

 

Here’s a couple of links:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/244268/en-us

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/220874

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307287

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APIPA

http://superuser.com/questions/482520/why-am-i-getting-a-169-ip-address-at-startup

http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/automatic-private-ip-addressing-apipa.html

http://lyngtinh.blogspot.com/2011/12/how-to-disable-autoconfiguration-ipv4.html