Computers alternately appear in neighborhood network never both.

[elric69]

Were pulling out hair out and my g/f is about to leave me because we've spent 5 hours trying to get to pcs networked. The problem is that after Browse master is activated, we can both view our own pc in network neighborhood but only of us can see the other computer, buit can't actually browse the shared folders.

The machine that (almost) talks to the other machine is determined by which machine boots up first (we are using a hub by the way and two 10mps NIC's which both appear to work as both link lights are on as are the lights on the hub. pinging 127.0.0.1 and each pc's IP both work fine on each machine, just cant ping each other) TCP/IP protocol doesn't appear to be properly set up, as we tested it on a TCP/IP game of glquake (quake 1). Similar results as in network neighbour hood. One pc could see the others host game but not join it, and no servers found other way round.)
Checked BIOS and neither machine has wake on alarm/ring/lan enabled.

Protocols installed: netBEUI, TCP/IP
Services: print and file share
Client: client for microsoft networks.

We assume the cables are fine since pinging own IP works fine.
I really can't think of anything else to do please please please does any one have any insight.

Does LM Announce really have to be set to yes?

And with our two pc's, am I correct in assuming that Browse Master must be enabled on one machine and disabled on the other? Also some posts mention a Hosts file...what is this? Do I need it and if so how do I set it up?

Does it matter that one card is PCI and the other ISA, even though it's same cable types?

DO NIC's have to be half or full duplex?

Final question: Why did Billy Boy make it so darn hard????!!??!

 

[jimbopalmer]

Self ping is internal, says nothing about cables, but the link lights are promising. since you have a hub, you need to be half duplex, (if you had a switch you can be full duplex, but full duplex is very rare at 10 meg) i have never owned a PC so beyond that I have no clue. The one thing you can't give for your heart's desire is your heart. - Lois McMaster Bujold

 

[ifincham]

Hi,

Fairly basic really but did you configure them both on the same subnet ? On the TCP config for the ethernet cards, You should have something like an address of 172.16.16.1 on one and 172.16.16.2 on the other with both having a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0 .

The netbios bits should just work because there would be a browser election and, all other things being equal, the first machine powered on would win.

If it still doesn't work you could rule out a faulty hub by getting hold of a cat5 'cross-over' cable and using it to directly connect machine1's nic to machine2's nic.

The hosts file is just a local 'dns' file, i.e. if you had 'machine1 172.16.16.1' in 'hosts' on machine2 you could do 'ping machine1' as well as 'ping 172.16.16.1' from that box.

Hope this helps

 

[elric69]

Well my next course of action is to removed networking and NIC's from both pc's and start from scratch. The hub works fine because it was used successfully on a different network previously.

Thanks for the info on the host file, though I'm guessing its not gonna help nme much.

The strangest thing is it appear that which ever pc boots up first can (in network neighborhood) view themselves and all shared drives and vew the icon for other computer (same domain) but not its resources (drive c full share atm) whilst the computer that booted up second can view itself + resources but nothing of the either computer. In this state neither machine can be pinged from the other.

Our hub has a port at the top (number 1) which appears to be reserved for some sort of file server...has anyone come accross THIS before and would using ports 2 and 3 only cause problems?

Thanks for the help so far guys.

 

[Zelandakh]

Your number 1 port could be crossed which would create problems. Try 2 and 3.

Install NetBIOS on both, skipping TCPIP and test. Reboot if it wants to beforehand...

In Identification, name them accordingly and put them in the same workgroup.

Does this cure the problem?