I'm wondering if my USB wireless client is about to fail.  Yesterday, I
could no longer connect to either my home workgroup or the Internet from my
Vista x64 box.  All had been working fine until then.  After fooling with
every possible combination of hardware and software possibilities for the
problem, I finally did what I should have done first.

I ran ipconfig and the results showed the IPv4 address to be one of those
169.xxx.xxx.xxx addresses.  The setting were to automatically get IP address
and DNS server.  So, that explains why the computer wasn't on the workgroup
or couldn't get to the Internet.

I manually set the IPv4 address to one in the range of my LAN 192.168.x.x
and filled in the ISP's DNS server address.  Everything is working fine now.

Could the fact that the USB device didn't automatically find the IP address,
etc. be the warning of a hardware failure?  Should I start looking for
another?  Finding a USB wireless client that works with Vista x64 won't be
easy.

TIA