Windows XP stops other computers on network working - why?

[meeble]

I have a small network where the computers are connected via a hub. These computers are Windows 2000 and Mac. When I plug in a computer running Windows XP Professional into the hub, it stops TCP/IP working for the other computers. They can still connect to each other by using the computer's name but Internet stops working and connections to the mail server via tcp/ip stop working as does connections to the router.

Any ideas?

Cheers

James

 

[wolluf]

Sounds very odd - how are your IP addresses allocated (manually or DHCP server)? When you say it stops TCP/IP working - does it actually disable/remove the IP addresses on the other machines? Presume nothing unusual about XP machine's setup. Have you tried it with just the other windows machines connected to see if its an XP/Mac issue?

 

[meeble]

The IP addresses are allocated by DHCP server and it does disable/remove the IP addresses on the other machines. There isn't a conflict with the macs - it appears to be with the W2K computers.

 

[wolluf]

I've not seen anything like this - so am a bit short of ideas. Could you try giving the XP machine a manual IP address? (and or, give the 2k machines manual addresses)?Just to see if this made a difference - don't have any solutions unfortunately.

 

[smah]

Can you clarify "stops TCP/IP from working" a little further? Are the computers in a peer to peer network or server/client network?

The reason I ask is because some time ago, I had something like this happen when I added a Linux Samba server to my peer to peer network. My workgroup immediately became unbrowsable throut network neighborhood, even though the workgroup was still visible. I can't remember the settings that caused this, but if it sounds like your problem, I will go back through my Samba stuff & research what it was. Then we may be able to apply that knowledge to your XP situation. Off the top of my head, I think that XP (like Samba) has a tendency to try to take over browse master responsibilities.

Post back if this sounds right and I will have a look at my old notes & settings.

 

[mdbasco]

My first guess would be that Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) has been enabled for the network connection on the XP machine. This allows your XP machine to assign ip addresses to others on the lan like a DHCP server, but because the addresses are not correct for your environment, only local (machine to machine) comunication will work...

Just a guess. Good luck with it.

 

[Fobie1Knobie]

I will agree with MDBASCO, it may be the internet connections sharing, but you may also want to look at other things. Your winxpbox may be working as a router, which is about the same the internet connection sharing, I have seen this many times on Novell networks, but in this case if you are just using tcp/ip, then I am unsure if is not the internet connections sharing.