Hi everyone.
Two months ago I had set up a 100mbps LAN between my desktop and a notebook, both with Windows XP Professional installed. At first it worked like a dream: I was able to configure the whole thing in half an hour.
Desktop: IP 192.168.0.1, subnet 255.255.255.0
Notebook: IP 192.168.0.2, subnet 255.255.255.0, Gateway 192.168.0.1, DNS 192.168.0.1
I was even able to set up Internet Connection Sharing on the XP host and it worked perfectly.
Now, yesterday, with ABSOLUTLY NO REASON (but there must be, of course), my home network stopped working ALMOST completely. With "almost" I mean I still can ping one computer from the other using the IP address. This means cables and NIC cards are not damaged, right?
However, the gateway icon on the ICS guest has disappeared, and if I go browse Network Neighborhood for computers in the same workgroup I see only the localhost, not the other one. If I try to directly access it with the path \\computername it tells me it is not a valid network path. The Network Heighborhood icon itself even disappears sometimes!
I have tried everything: checked PCs have different names, checked they are in the same workgroup, tried with/without DNS suffix, tried disabling ICS, forcing NetBIOS enabled, removing TCP/IP and Client for Microsoft networks and then reinstalling everything, even tried removing and completely reinstalling the NIC cards, with the only effect of Windows "remembering" of them and each time adding an increasing #2, #3, #4 number after the name.
Guys, this is a big challenge! I have already gone mad, so any help will be MUCH appreciated!!!
Thanks in advance.
Two months ago I had set up a 100mbps LAN between my desktop and a notebook, both with Windows XP Professional installed. At first it worked like a dream: I was able to configure the whole thing in half an hour.
Desktop: IP 192.168.0.1, subnet 255.255.255.0
Notebook: IP 192.168.0.2, subnet 255.255.255.0, Gateway 192.168.0.1, DNS 192.168.0.1
I was even able to set up Internet Connection Sharing on the XP host and it worked perfectly.
Now, yesterday, with ABSOLUTLY NO REASON (but there must be, of course), my home network stopped working ALMOST completely. With "almost" I mean I still can ping one computer from the other using the IP address. This means cables and NIC cards are not damaged, right?
However, the gateway icon on the ICS guest has disappeared, and if I go browse Network Neighborhood for computers in the same workgroup I see only the localhost, not the other one. If I try to directly access it with the path \\computername it tells me it is not a valid network path. The Network Heighborhood icon itself even disappears sometimes!
I have tried everything: checked PCs have different names, checked they are in the same workgroup, tried with/without DNS suffix, tried disabling ICS, forcing NetBIOS enabled, removing TCP/IP and Client for Microsoft networks and then reinstalling everything, even tried removing and completely reinstalling the NIC cards, with the only effect of Windows "remembering" of them and each time adding an increasing #2, #3, #4 number after the name.
Guys, this is a big challenge! I have already gone mad, so any help will be MUCH appreciated!!!
Thanks in advance.
