Help Me Fix My Wi-Fi Router

Two days ago, my Linksys BEFW11S4 Wi-Fi router went on strike: It refuses to use DHCP to hand out IP addresses, and so I've had to assign static IP addresses to all my PCs. Incompetent Linksys technicians have been no help. Can anyone out there provide a fix? I'll be updating the firmware, hoping that solves the problem. But I'm not sure that it will. And yes, I know that Wi-Fi routers are cheap, and so I should buy a new one, but I'm holding off buying something until the new year, when I plan to upgrade my whole network to pre-N.

The problem is straightforward. The router simply refuses to give out IP addresses. Re-starting it doesn't help.

I put in a call to Linksys tech support about it, and the techie's ignorance about the basics of networking were breathtaking. Any PCs on my network that had already been assigned IP addresses by the router worked fine, even after re-starting the router. That's because the PCs don't give up their IP addresses when the router is turned off; they give them up when the PC is turned off.

Whenever I turn off a PC, it loses its IP address, and so I have to manually assign it an address. But the technician still insisted that the problem was with my PCs, not with the router. Do they actually pay these guys to make statements like this? Where do they receive their training -- at WalMart?

In any event, if you have a fix, post it here. The winner gets my undying gratitude, and a big thank you in a future blog.