Client Virtual machines not getting IP address from DHCP Virtual machines

Hello there, I have a Virtual Machines running on Windows Server 2008 which is installed as a DC. On the second virtual machine running on Windows Server 2008 I have a DHCP and NPS running and the third virtual machine is working on Windows Vista. The problem is the Vista virtual machine is not picking up IP address from the DHCP virtual machine. I am using Window 7 with Windows virtual PC as the virtualisation software. So please explain me why Client Virtual machines are not getting IP address from DHCP Virtual machines. Any suggestions about the topic are more than welcome. Thanks in advance.

It is possible that there is some configuration problems due to which the client pc's are not able to get the Ip address from the DHCP servers. The network should be properly configured in order to make it work properly. Hence I will suggest that you check the configuration of the network first before doing any troubleshooting first. Check the configuration of each and every device on the computer and if there are any changes to be made, do it and save the settings. After changing the configuration, check if the ip address is fetched from the DHCP client or not.

Is there any security software installed on the Vista machine? If yes then it could be the reason behind the problem. All the security software's which are installed on the computer have basic tendency of blocking the unknown traffic originating or terminating on the computer. Due to this tendency sometimes the traffic desired by the user is also blocked which gives rise to such problem. Therefore try disabling the firewall on the system and then check if the system is able to get the IP address or not.

The default networking mode of Virtual PC in Windows 7 uses NAT for establishing connection which sometimes create problems while connecting to the computers on the network. Try changing the networking mode of Virtual PC on the computer and then check if the virtual machine is getting the IP address from the DHCP server. To change the networking mode of Virtual machine, follow the steps below :-

• Go to the Settings for your XP Mode vm.
• Change the network adapter binding from NAT to the physical network adapter of your Windows 7 machine.
• Create a share for the My Documents folder on the XP vm.
• On the Windows 7 machine, map a drive to the share on the XP vm

The Vista virtual machine is not able to get the IP address from the DHCP because of the DHCP server must be running on it already. As the internal DHCP server is running on the computer, it will not fetch the IP address from the external DHCP. You will have to disable the internal DHCP on the machine. Once the internal DHCP on the machine is disabled, it will accept the IP address given by the external DHCP virtual machine.