In my view, what windows sorely needs here is a control panel that can make
this sort of thing a lot less of a black art, Surely it could be designed so
t looked at all the connections and suggested best addresses to set as
fixed?
Brian

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Dave Plowman (News) formulated the question :
Google did give a work round, but involved pages and pages of
reconfiguring near everything onto static IP addresses and so on.

I configure most things to static IP's anyway, it makes certain things
much easier that way, like printing to a remote printer.

For PCs that run mini web servers to configure a software package (eg
weather station software or TVHeadend PVR) I set fixed IP addresses.
Printing to a remote printer over the network also requires that the
printer has a fixed IP.

But I never set them statically at the PC by configuring TCP not to use
DHCP. It is too prone to getting two devices clashing on IP if you forget
what you've already set. Also, with a portable computer (eg laptop,
tablet, phone) it may get used on other networks with different subnet (eg
192.168.1.x rather than 192.168.0.x) or where static IP will clash.

What I do instead is to keep DHCP enabled on the PCs but set "reserved IP
addresses" at the router: most modern routers allow you to set a series of
MAC addresses (the hardware address of the adaptor, unique throughout the
world) and correspond IP addresses that will be allocated. When a PC
boots, it will ask for an IP in the normal way, but the router will always
give it the same address rather than choosing one "at random" based on
which ones are not already allocated.