My mum gave me a ring this morning, she had turned her laptop on, and it had come up with the message 'another computer on this network has the same ip address' she was worried about this, does she need to be

Sorry, but I don't know about these things

it may be a smart phone, a tablet, a sky box.
you can log into the router and see specifics, then assign an ip per device if you want.

steve

TBH that shouldn't happen on a home network unless something has been assigned a static IP address...

Think of IP address's like the tickets at a meet counter or doctors. First come first served but if someone has mocked one up to jump the queue it can cause confusion... FFRR MY06 facelift With TDV8 Alloys Zeros/ATR's
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The most important thing to do is check her WiFi (assuming she has one) is not being used by an authorised user.

Last edited by Katash on 5th Feb 2013 11:21am. Edited 1 time in total

Only thing I can think of, a few months ago she bought a smart TV. But if it had been this, would it have not brought the message up straight away?

If she just wants it to go away - try powering off both the laptop & router, then switching them both back on again.

WiFi should have encryption/passwords etc or anyone can use it.

The default setting for most devices is to get an IP address dynamically allocated by the router when you connect to it. However, you can set a device to use a fixed address, in which case it's up to you to ensure that only 1 device uses each address.

It is possible that somehow her laptop is set to fixed IP and the router has already allocated that to another device (eg a phone, or the TV) so when she turns the laptop on, there is a conflict.