Technology in terms you understand. Sign up for the Confident Computing newsletter for weekly solutions to make your life easier. Click here and get The Ask Leo! Guide to Staying Safe on the Internet — FREE Edition as my thank you for subscribing!

Why does “Acquiring network address” show continuously in my icon tray?

Question:

I’m using XP SP3. The LAN icon in the tray says “Acquiring network address”
continuously, even though I’m connected to the network and the internet is just
fine. What causes this?

In this excerpt from
Answercast #12
, I look at probable causes for inaccurate icon tray
notifications and explain what I do when that happens.

Become a Patron of Ask Leo! and go ad-free!

What does this notice mean?

In short, I don’t know.

What I do know )and can tell you) is that it does happen. It’s not that
uncommon for the network icon (in the system tray) to show “Acquiring network
address” or actually show “No connectivity” (with the international No sign
through it) while there is, in fact, connectivity.

Perhaps a driver bug

My belief is (since it’s so inconsistent across the computers that I’ve
used and heard about) that it is actually a driver problem.

I know that some of the information that’s provided for that pop-up menu,
for that icon, comes directly from the driver. It’s possible that, since
drivers are being written by so many different vendors, and so many different
people, that there’s simply a bug that is easy to make that causes that icon
status not to be updated properly.

In most cases, it works and it’s quite reliable. When it doesn’t, I simply
learned that, OK, on this computer, I can’t rely on that. In this situation
I can’t rely on that. I’ll check for connectivity some other way.

As you said: It’s working. So there’s no real reason to be too
concerned.

Do this

Subscribe to Confident Computing! Less frustration and more confidence, solutions, answers, and tips in your inbox every week.

I'll see you there!

2 comments on “Why does “Acquiring network address” show continuously in my icon tray?”

  1. It happens to me too (XP-SP3 also), but goes away when I do the following: double-click on the icon, select the ‘General’ tab & select the ‘TCP-IP Properties’ setting (without changing anything, since it’s working OK anyway) and select ‘OK’. Voilà! Just curious – would updating the driver resolve the ‘misinformation’ issue?

    Best I can say is maybe. Since it’s not a functional problem – networking works – fixing it may not be on the manufacturer’s list of priorities.

    Leo
    29-Apr-2012
    Reply
  2. To Dave Hunt:

    Indeed, that ‘voodoo’ solution stopped the ‘acquiring network address’ looping.

    thanks for the SIMPLEST solution

    Reply

Leave a reply:

Before commenting please:

  • Read the article.
  • Comment on the article.
  • No personal information.
  • No spam.

Comments violating those rules will be removed. Comments that don't add value will be removed, including off-topic or content-free comments, or comments that look even a little bit like spam. All comments containing links and certain keywords will be moderated before publication.

I want comments to be valuable for everyone, including those who come later and take the time to read.