If you can’t connect to the internet and your computer appears to have an IP address that starts with 169, there’s a simple explanation. This type of error occurs when a Windows computer requests an IP address and doesn’t receive one. To fix this type of 169 IP address error, your computer needs to be able to obtain a valid IP address from your network.
How do you fix a 169 IP address so you can get online?
In order for a computer to access the Internet over a network, it needs a valid IP address. The easiest way to ensure that this happens seamlessly is through Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP), a setting that allows the router to automatically assign an IP address to each device on the network.
When a Windows computer can’t communicate with the DHCP server, something called Automatic Private IP Addressing (APIPA) comes into play. It assigns the computer an IP address that starts with 169.254. These IP addresses are only useful on local networks, not on the Internet.
To fix an error where your computer has an invalid IP address starting with 169, you need to make sure that the network device in your computer can communicate with your network hardware.
