Windows XP forum: Network connection is stuck "Acquiring network address"

I decided it was time to put my home office back together over the weekend. As usual I decided to clean everything up, review my network security implementation, etc. Well I decided I was finally sick of my antivirus software and my subscription had expired and I realized that the bigger name antivirus packages were probably more prone to being exploited than some of the smaller vendors. So, I decided it was time to switch providers. Long story short, I ran into a little problem. It turns out that if you do the following:

- Disable the Windows Firewall/Internet connection sharing (ICS) service
- disable your local area network connection
- enable your local area network connection

your local area network connection will get stuck in an endless loop trying to acquire a network address. In addition the Computer Browser service will terminate due to a timeout. At that point you should be able to find an event using eventvwr.exe in the system group stating that "The Computer Browser service terminated with the following error: This operation returned because the timeout period expired" with an event id of 7023.

Well I'm writing this because after 30 minutes or more of searching through a bunch of posts related to this type of issue on wireless neworks, I finally happen upon some official Microsoft documentation...

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=889320&SD=tech

Microsoft is aware of the issue but I know that finding the problem in my case was a pain. This resolved my issue and I'm hoping that by posting this here I'll make the problem more visible for others.