DHCP not working on 2008 MacBook Pro

[kenchie]

Hi -

One of our users on a large college network has an early 2008 MacBook Pro running Lion. The other day the laptop froze, and ever since it has not been able to pick up IP addresses via DHCP, it will only assign itself a 169.254 range address. The problem exists on both ethernet & wi-fi. I have tried the following without success;

Removed proxy entries/PASV mode
New Location
Different user account
Trashed the 'SystemConfiguration' folder
Removed all college entries from keychain
Installed USB ethernet adapter
Reset PRAM

The ethernet cable and wallport it is connected to work fine with other PCs.
I am running out of ideas - any suggestions please?

Thanks.

 

[sullij]

what do system preference show under network?
what do the logs indicate during the periods when you try to connect?

the fact that it "froze" and neither wired or wireless works suggests a software failure. If you have the backup disks or another bootable drive, can you boot and connect from that point?