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Feb 28, 2007 11:13 GMT  ·  By

Connectivity problems are among the various compatibility issues that have plagued the first month of Windows Vista's commercial availability. In this regard, Microsoft has tackled a specific scenario involving a Windows Vista machine with an old IP address registered, faced with the modification of the GUID of a network adapter.

"The GUID may also change if the network adapter's configuration changes from Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) to static IP and then from static IP to DHCP. The old GUID and its associated IP addresses are not cleared from the DNS client configuration. Therefore, the old IP addresses remain registered for the computer. In this situation, the authoritative zone on a DNS server is populated with both IP addresses that are not valid and IP addresses that are valid," explained Microsoft.

The changed Globally Unique Identifier for the network adapter leads to the adapter registering invalid IP addresses. GUID are pseudo-random 128-bit numbers used to identify any component in the computer. Microsoft has informed that upgrading the operating system of a computer to Windows Vista may cause the GUID of the network adapter to be altered.

"A DNS server cannot distinguish between IP addresses that are valid and IP addresses that are not valid. Therefore, when a DNS server responds to queries from client computers, the server may distribute an IP address that is not valid. If another client computer tries to use this IP address, the computer experiences a connection failure," Microsoft added.

Microsoft is currently delivering two solutions for x64 and x86 platforms. The updates impact all editions of Windows Vista.