how do i stop my IP changing?

here's the thing,
at home i have
one desktop turned on 24/7,
one laptop turned on all the time when i'm at home,
another laptop turned when the kids are here and,
a PS3 (used for streaming movies).

if i don't turn the machines on in a certain order,
they all end up changing their IP addys.

the problem i have with this is on a couple of machines,i have some ports forwarded for certain programs *cough*.

how can i stop each machines IP addys from changing?

TIA.

harrytb.

Try increasing the DCHP lease on the router.

thanks Rev,
i''l give that a go tomorrow and let you know how i got on.

cheers.

Or you can turn DHCP off at the router and hard set the IPs.

i set the router to "lifetime"
i then turned of all the machines,wireless router and modem.
then turned on the modem,wireless router,this then cleared all machine IP's.
then i turned on all the machines in order of which i wanted first on the list IE,#1.#2 and so on.
then rebooted all the machines.
yippee,they all have the same IP's as before i rebooted.

thanks Rev.
@ rik,cheers,
if for any reason this fails in the future,i'll be sure to have a go with your suggestion.

thanks guys.

Is this -[FIXED]-

i would suggest however, that lifetime is not a good solution since a lot of devices might come and go. Reservation for the key devices is better. My main machine runs with reservation, as well as my Internet PC and my laptop, because I share folders using UNC IP paths (I remember IP addresses better than computer names, trait from work), for everything else that I don't need a reservation I leave it in regular DHCP 3 day lease. Sometimes I increase the lease to 7 day, so I can review the logs and see if anything requested an IP that should not (like neighbors trying to get on my network, etc).
DHCP to lifetime can create also DNS nightmares

@ cash_site,it is "fixed" sort off.

i ended up asigning each machine it's own IP.
the idea came from another thread i started on here somewhere a little while ago.

@ dehcbad25,good point that,
think i might knock it back down to around 7 days.

thanks everyone,
all machines have kept thier IP's that i gave them a while ago.
all's good in the hood.

glad that you found a solution. :D