Networking Win 2000 & Win 98

[Austral]

Hi,

I'm trying to get my network working and it's becoming a nightmare. I have 3 computers. One with Windows 98 and two with Windows 2000 Professional. I have a Linksys hub and NIC cards for all 3 computers. The hardware seems to be working correctly. Windows 2000 seems to be the big problem.

The old computer with Windows 98 seems to work ok on the network. I can see one other computer and look at all the drives and folders and files without a problem. The same Windows 2000 computer that i can see has random problems. Sometimes it can't find the Win 98 computer in Computers Near Me and sometimes it can find it. The group name is the same for all 3 computers. When it finally sees that the other computer exists and I click on it Win 2000 locks up and cuts the windows in half among other things. I can't even do a Ctrl|Alt|Delete to get out. Once I was actually able to start using the printer on the Win. 98 computer from the Win 2000 computer but then it locked up the entire Win 2000 computer in the middle of the first page and locked the printer.

The computer with Windows should not have a hardware problem. It is a AMD1200 with 512 Mg or ram.

I have never been able to get the other Windows 2000 computer to work at all with the network. The workgroup is the same on all three. I have set all the drives to share. I don't have a firewall installed on them. Actually I did but I removed it.

I tried moving the newtwork card to another slot on the one that doesn't work at all. Now it thinks there are 2 NIC cards.

I've bought a book on networking and followed all the instructions and downloaded instructions and tried them.

Sometimes I get "The network path was not found."

Sorry for this long rambling post but I'm really exasperated.

Austral

 

[FosTech]

Austral,

It sounds like you have all your i's dotted and all of your t's crossed! You have obviously setup your network by the book.
It may be down to a bad network cable or possibly corrupted drivers with one or more of your NICs.
Check out your hardware and make another post with your findings.

-Brett

 

[butchrecon]

One thing you might try is installing NetBEUI. this protocol will help with the network neighborhood issue. As for the one locking up. It may be in the hardware somewhere. Also edit the host file on all three PCs and put the IP address and PC name for each in all three hosts files. The PC locking up may have a bad NIC. James Collins
Field Service Engineer
A+, MCP, Network+

email: butchrecon@skyenet.net

Please let us (Tek-tips members) know if the solutions we provide are helpful to you. Not only do they help you but they may help others.

 

[Austral]

Thank for the recommendations. I'll give them a try.

 

[HeavyLee]

Hi.
The only thing I could add to this thread is to make sure all the PCs are working on the same workgroup. I recently had a somewhat similar problem and it was solved by reconfiguring the network settings from being on a domain to a workgroup.