ibook g4 won't connect to internet

Please be patient as I'm not familiar with macs. I'm helping my mother with her ibook g4. She lives next door in a side by side house and gets her internet from our dlink router. The signal seems to be working as my wife's laptop gets the internet in our house. My mother has a dlink booster in her house that seems to be getting the signal as its light is flickering which means it's working. Her ibook seems to be getting the signal as all bars on top are black. When trying safari or mail an error shows that the server can't be found. Any ideas what to look for?

Your connected to the wireless network, but you don't have an internet connection.
What system are you running?
example:. Mac OSX 10.6.2
you can see this under: "Apple menu"-->About this Mac

Supposing you are running at least OS X Tiger (10.4.0)
go to the system preferences,
go to "Network"
click "airport"
click on "advanced"
a screen should pop-up
click on "TCP/IP" in the top
click on Refresh DHCP Lease
if this doens't work,
reset the router. most of times this works.

cheers

I've tried all that. After the refresh the ip address keeps beginning with 169.

hmm.. 169 is in fact a local adress, so that should be fine..
could you send me some pictures of both your dlink setting, as well as your network settings?
I'll send you my e-mail adress in a private message.

I think I'm screwing things up more. I turned the ibook on this morning and no network is showing. I tried creating a network naming it default on channel 11. It gives a strange symbol instead of the bars and said a computer to computer connection was made.

I got the network back. The router somehow had the channel changed to 6. I changed it to 11 and the ibook connected to the network. However I'm still back to the original problem of not connecting to the internet. When going into network from system preferences it says about airport- Airport is connected to network default. Airport has a self assigned ip address and may not be able to connect to the internet. The configure ipv4 is using DHCP and the ip address begins with 169. Right back to square one.

Got the problem solved, sorry I was so long getting back. It turned out that it was the router. I took the laptop to the apple store and it worked fine with their wifi. My router was 10 years old and apparently showing its age. I went to best buy and bought a belkin n+ router and everything is working great. Thanks for all your help.

LOL sometimes the dashed things show their age at 13 months, as soon as the warranty expires. They are pretty high tech gadgets and do fail from time to time.