Users report they periodically cannot access shares on a file server. The file server has a static IP address of 10.4.0.130. A technician discovers a message about an IP address conflict appearing…

A DHCP reservation ties a specific IP address to a specific client MAC address in the DHCP server configuration, ensuring the address 10.4.0.130 is never dynamically assigned to any other device on the network. This is the most direct fix because it eliminates the root cause - the DHCP server distributing an address already in use as a static assignment - without requiring any reconfiguration on the file server itself.

Enabling DNS options configures name resolution settings and has no effect on IP address assignment or the resolution of an IP conflict.

Increasing the DHCP scope adds more addresses to the available pool but does not exclude 10.4.0.130 from being assigned to other DHCP clients, so the conflict would persist.

Reconfiguring the default gateway changes the server's routing path off-network and is unrelated to an IP address conflict caused by overlapping static and dynamic assignments.