In need of LAN help...

[Pertti]

Kruzin,

If you mount one of your bosses shared disks/directories to a drive letter on yours, does it help ?

I really thought it was the "User" problem, because I had exactly the same problem once.
I was talking a guy through installing a network over telephone, all went well, except one of the machines refused to see the other, while the second one had no problems seeing the first one.
Took me two evenings, untill I asked him to go to the Control Panel\Users, and set up a User Profile, and everything started working.
Where I got the idea - I don't know, but it was the very last idea that came to my mind, and it worked (and has worked ever since).

Pertti

[RAB]

Kruzin,
When I recently set up two old computers in a crossover cable peer to peer network, I had what sounds like the same problem. The indicator lights were green on both NIC's but there was no communication. I plugged them into a hub (with regular cables, of course) and, sure enough, one would not light its LED on the hub. If you have a hub lying around, try plugging into it and see what happens. When I replaced the bad NIC everything worked the first time.

With good cheap 10/100 NIC's from Linksys and Netgear selling for just $15 or $20, get a new one (or two) and try them before you go crazy.

RAB

[This message has been edited by RAB (edited 24 May 2000).]

[Jupp]

Kruzin,

if you do a 'ping localhost' or 'ping 127.0.0.1' on your boss' comp, does this work? If so, at least your tcp/ip protocol stack is installed properly.

The connection indicator on a hub does not necessarily show that the nic/cable is damaged. If you connect a combo nic (with 10 Base T, AUI, BNC connectors) to a hub and the card is set up to automagically detect the connection type, the connection indicator on the hub will not show a connection until the card is properly initialized by its driver.

Anyway, asfaik Realtek nics ship with some dos utilities. If the 'faulty' nic is a combo card, use the utilities to force the nic to use the 10 Base T connection.


R.

------------------
P3B-F/P3-700E/256MB
G400Max/SBLive

[Kruzin]

To answer a few qquestions some have asked...

My machine can see his machine any time. I have permanently mapped his HD to a drive letter on my machine, and x-fer files back and forth all the time. I also use his printer (he gets a kick out of me sending girlie pics to his bubblejet ) Even with that drive shared, neither machine can ping the other.

I am confident it's not either LAN card or cabling. Both NICs have been in both machines. Either way, it's always my machine that works. 2 known good cables have been tried.

Niether machine had a user profile set up. I tried that late yesterday. For a brief moment, his machine saw mine in network neiborhood. I tried to map a drive. Couldn't find it. Then his machine once again showed no hint of seeing mine.

I did try TCP/IP alone first. Nothing at all like that. Only after installing netbui in addition to TCP/IP will get it going (on my end at least). This hints to a TCP/IP stack problem. His machine is a fresh install of 98(se). My machine is a 6-month old install of 98(Fe). My machine is using TCP/IP daily for internet access. I have removed and re-installed all protocols (many times now).

Anyone got a sledge hammer I can borrow?

[Taz]

One more thing to try before beating the living daylights out of it is to look at the properties for TCP/IP and Netbui, if both have bindings to Client for Microsoft Networks unbind TCP/IP so only Netbui is bound to it. Do the same for File and Print Sharing. Do this on the other PC, both should now only be using Netbui for Microsoft networking so if TCP/IP is buggered on either machine it won't affect you peer-to-peer LAN.

[Technoid]

Kruzin

Dont't use the sledge hammer!

This has happened to me in different ways!

And when it isn't Hardware it's software!
(I know it sounded funny but bear me out)

Make a clean reinstall on the machine that can't be seen!

Removing protocols and reinstalling them again doesen't fix that much because it dosen't remove all crazy thing's in the registry!




------------------
INTEL PIII550 MSI 6163
G400Mill 32MB SGRAM + RRG
SBlive
256 MB RAM CAS2
43GB HDD Space!(Actual 40GB) (13+30 Quantum drives)
Pioneer 104S DVD 10x CD 40x SLOT IN
SONY CRX100E 4/2/24 CDRW

[Chucky Cheese]

Kruzin,

i don't mean to over simplify matters because there are some really good ideas proffered here...but you don't have a "lastdrive=" statement in your config.sys file do you?

chucky