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Help. i just bought a ethernet cable to link my xbox 360 to my laptop so that i can get xbox live but the network adaptor is wired but my ip address failed. what do i need to do?

Are you using internet connection sharing? if so you need a crossover type ethernet cable to connect to a laptop, not the straight through type that came with the xbox, which is used for connection to a router. then use windows networking wizard (xp onwards) to set up internet connection sharing, and the xbox should sort its own ip address out from that.