Install DHCP Components Open the Windows Components section of Add/Remove programs:

Open Network Services

Ensure that the DHCP checkbox is ticked and press OK

Wait

Press Finish Using the 80/20 Rule for Servers and Scopes To provide fault tolerance for the DHCP service within a given subnet, you can configure two DHCP servers to assign addresses on the same subnet. Here if one server fails then the other can take over. For balancing DHCP server use in this case, a good practice is to use the 80/20 rule to divide the scope addresses between the two DHCP servers. Server 1 is configured to assign 80% of the total addresses and server 2 is assigned the other 20%. Both servers have the same IP range but exclude each others portion of that range. Configure the First Scope

Open the DHCP Management Console from Administrative Tools

The console with nothing configured, you should create a scope before you authorize the server.

Select New Scope

Press Next

Give the scope a relevant name, perhaps an indication of the location or purpose of the scope.

The IP Address range is important, dont use too many address in one scope when those extra addresses can be used somewhere else. If you only need one scope and you have less that 254 computers and network components then use the 192.168.x.y range with a Length of 24. With this configuration every separate subnet will increment the value of x. Example: 192.168.0.254 is the last IP address of the first subnet and 192.168.1.1 is the first IP address of the next subnet. Once the IP range has been configured press Next

Here you can decide what IP address that are within the scope are not to be used for DHCP clients. The common standard as I know it is to use the first IP address for the Router or Default Gateway of the subnet. The next 10 or 20 IP Addresses are to be used for any Servers that you have on the subnet, although not necessary Domain Controllers, DNS servers, etc should use static IP addresses and hence these addresses should be excluded or not included within the DHCP scope. #

The lease duration is the length of time that a computer can use the IP address that it was assigned from the DHCP server. Unless you have a specific reason to change it just leave it as it is.

Select Yes and press next.

Add the IP address of the subnets router (Default Gateway). Dont use more than one.

Add the IP addresses of the DNS servers to be used by the DHCP clients. DNS servers do not have to be on the same subnet, they clients will attempt to contact the servers in the order that they are appear in this list. If you have a dns server on the local subnet then put that at the top.

Much the same as DNS servers but used for pre-windows 2000 name resolution. Do not configure if you have no Windows 9x/ME clients

Unless you have a reason not to, Select Yes and press next

Press Finish

The scope is shown and further configuration is possible from this window

Only Domain Controllers and Domain member servers can be authorized in Active Directory. Stand-alone DHCP servers or workgroup DHCP servers running windows 2000 or 2003 cannot be authorized in Active Directory but can coexist on the network as long as they are not deployed on the same subnet as an authorized DHCP server.

All working now.