My apologies for the delay getting back to you. Been busy myself.
To answer your question…every device must have a unique address. For computers this is usually done via a piece of software in the router called DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol). This leases an address to a computer, and it gets renewed periodically. It’s called dynamic or automatic addressing.
It is also desirable in certain circumstances to permanently set an address on a device. This called a static address. It has nothing to do with DHCP and the danger here is that if it not done correctly, at some point DHCP will issue the same address to another device. The two devices then argue about who owns the address and all sorts of chaos ensue, including the type of behaviour you have described.
I don’t know what article you’ve looked at on Google, so I can’t say how “safe” it is but changing an IP address is straightforward and should not be risky. Before you do so, the easiest way to check if this is indeed the problem here is to do the following:
On both machines type CMD in the search box and press enter. This opens a black and white command window. In this window type ipconfig and press enter. This brings up a display of basic information including the IPv4 address. The address will be in the form of 192.168.1.x The first part is the address for the network and 192.168.1 is BT’s default setting. All your devices will share this. However, the x must be different for the two machines. If x is the same, this where your problem is coming from.
In terms of removing the static address, (if there is one), it might be easier to get a friend, neighbour or relative in to do it, but as I said, it’s very basic stuff and not likely to cause any problems.
