Networking issues and whatnot... then SMB hopefully

Several weeks ago, I bought myself a router solely with the intent of building a private home network for file and printer sharing only, without any internet connection whatsoever.

Breezing through setup, I got every device on the network up and running. However, my Wii is somehow unable to get it's own IP address on the network, even though my router lists it with it's very own address. I found and confirmed this over at the HBC, which displayed the "No Network Initialized" message (or something like that, not sure if I got the message down right).

Do I forcibly need an internet connection in order for my Wii to get an IP assigned? Or is it possible for me to assign one in some other way? The only time I saw it have an IP printed on screen was when it connected to a network with internet available. And I'm quite unfortunate right now, for I have no way to connect it to the internet at the moment.

Thank you in advance.

It has to pass the connection test in the system menu settings to be usable, which unfortunately includes a connection attempt to nintendo's servers.

That's too bad... the main reason, as I said, was to share files between my laptop and the Wii. I have come up with a different idea, but I have no clue how to go through with it Wii-side.

How about connecting my PC with my Wii through Ad-hoc, whilst sharing an internet connection with a different wireless card on the same computer for every device on my Ad-hoc network? I figure that as long as the connection test succeeds, I can then remove any internet connection and have my Wii keep it's IP.

I know how to do so in any computer with a Windows environment, but I wouldn't know how to go about succeeding on the Wii without manually assigning the workgroup my laptop is in. Unless there is a different method I'm unaware of...

If your sharing the internet access on your laptop with your wii, then you shouldn't have to do anything on the wii side. I have done the same thing successfully with an Xbox before. The only thing is that you might need to give your wii a static IP address, as the windows computer my generate an incompatable one. Assuming the test succeeds, you should be able to just use the Ad-Hoc side of it, without internet, as long as there isn't another network test.

I've used my wii on an ad-hoc network, as long as you manually assign the SSID it should work.