DHCP not working trying to connect to Windows Network

[Harry Kuhman]

Harry,
The Network is driven by a BT Voyager 240 Router which connects to Broadband.

OK, good. A router should set you up by DHCP and things should just work. Apparently that is not happening here but the problem should be resolvable.

From my Knoppix PC (Live CD) I and ping 127.0.0.1 OK but that's all

Meaningless. Pinging the loopback doesn't test the hardware at all. It would be much more useful to know what failed.

I have tried setting manual DNS, Gateway etc from netcardconfig

So what happened? What settings did you try (and why did you select those values)? I can't tell you what the manual settings should be without knowing what your router's IP address is and what settings it normally is expected to hand out.

So tell us what you are trying to use. Also tell us the results of typing ipconfig in your windows machine(s) at a command prompt, as well as what ifconfig is telling you under Knoppix.

If you have any nasty "security features" turned on in that router, like limiting access by MAC address or even by IP address, turn them off for now. I don't know if your router has these features or not, but many do and we have tracked down some problems to the router doing exactly what it had been told to do.

Can you ping the router's local IP address? Do you know the router's local IP address?