A client of ours purchased 4 Dell Dimension 3000 computers and asked us to network them in a peer to peer workgroup environment. the 4 workstations were running XP Home.
We arrived on site and began networking the 4 systems. We simply plugged the four computers into an 8 port switch and joined each computer into the same workgroup (called Workgroup). Each computer had an ip address (192.168.254.1 through to 5).
As always to verify connectivity we issued the Ping command from dos however we got 4 x destination unreachable messages. none of the workstations could successfully ping any of the other workstations.
we swapped both the switch and the network cables with known working ones but still no connectivity could be established. We even went back to basics and ran the XP networking wizard. no joy.
We called Dell support (india) who were no use at all. We're MCSE's and they knew next to nothing about anything.
In the end we had to put the problem down to a hardware fault and as Dell will not confirm this our client has basically cancelled the credit card payment so Dell don't get their money.
Anyway. We've since spoken to our sales contact at Dell and it looks like they may be modifying the Dimension range of computers so that they cannot be networked (in a workgroup environment). Possibly a hardware modification.
Either way we couldn't get the 4 dimensions to network and it's something we do (with other models/makes) on a daily basis.
has anyone else had a similar encounter?
We arrived on site and began networking the 4 systems. We simply plugged the four computers into an 8 port switch and joined each computer into the same workgroup (called Workgroup). Each computer had an ip address (192.168.254.1 through to 5).
As always to verify connectivity we issued the Ping command from dos however we got 4 x destination unreachable messages. none of the workstations could successfully ping any of the other workstations.
we swapped both the switch and the network cables with known working ones but still no connectivity could be established. We even went back to basics and ran the XP networking wizard. no joy.
We called Dell support (india) who were no use at all. We're MCSE's and they knew next to nothing about anything.
In the end we had to put the problem down to a hardware fault and as Dell will not confirm this our client has basically cancelled the credit card payment so Dell don't get their money.
Anyway. We've since spoken to our sales contact at Dell and it looks like they may be modifying the Dimension range of computers so that they cannot be networked (in a workgroup environment). Possibly a hardware modification.
Either way we couldn't get the 4 dimensions to network and it's something we do (with other models/makes) on a daily basis.
has anyone else had a similar encounter?
