xp home and 98se network annoyance

[johnyuka]

Hi there,

would be grateful for some help on this before i have no hair whatsoever! Seems a lot of people are having similar problems but not quite the same.

let me know if you need more detail.

I have 2 pc's
1 running xp home edition (1 network card)
1 running 98se (2 network cards)

98se connected to cable modem via network card 1
98se connected to xp home via network card 2 (crossover cable)

Network is called home

Xp home is set up as 10.0.0.2 on the home network with subnet mask 255.0.0.0 and is called steve
98 se is set up as 10.0.0.1 on the home network with subnet mask 255.0.0.0 and is called john

Xp home machine can ping the following with no prob;
10.0.0.2 (itself)
10.0.0.1 (98se machine)
john (98se machines name)

98se can ping;
10.0.0.1 (itself)

When 98se pings john (it's own name) it returns the ip address of network card 1 connecting to the cable modem and NOT 10.0.0.1
When 98se pings 10.0.0.2 it says request timed out.
When 98se pings steve it says request timed out.

I have disabled the xp home firewall
I have enabled netbios over tcp/ip on thne xp machine

Both computers show up in the my network places area of the xp home machine under the home network. When i click on john it says "john is not accessible" john
Only john shows up in the network neighbourhood of the 98se machine (i.e. it sees itself but not the xp home pc)


Please help me make these 2 pc's become friends!

cheers

John

[papertech]

In no way am I a network specialist. Infact, I recently failed the server+ exam, (but by only 5 points!) Anyway, resonding here with a question til someone in the know is able to step in.........

Has the 98 se (john) box ever been able to see the xp (steve) box?

[johnyuka]

nope never. The 98se box used to be part of a happy little network with another 98se box though. Using exactly the same settings.

Looks like they have communicated in some way since i posted last in that when i just tried to ping the xp box from the se one just now by saying ping steve it showed;

Pinging steve [10.0.0.2] with 32 bytes of data

Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.

which suggests that somehow the se box now has learnt that steve is the name of the computer with the ip of 10.0.0.2

curiouser and curiouser!

John

[Rick]

For all of this to work
You really should get the local network up and running first

The 98se machine is not using the 2nd nic.
It looks to me like it is not set up correctly for two card.
Each card should have it’s own address
Nic1 10.0.0.2– cable modem
Nic2 10.0.0.3-local network

Check your network properties for each card
assign each one an address
You may have to tell XP to use the 98se nic2 as a proxy to gain access to nic1

[johnyuka]

IP addy on the modem NIC has to be left as the cable company assigns it so no can do there.

Cracked the problem though. There was an old copy of Zone Alarm installed on the XP machine. It wasn't even actively running and managed to cause chaos. I uninstalled it, reinstalled a new copy and worked through the permissions and suddenly my PC's are skipping round the room holding hands. It was a beautiful moment.

Thanks as always for all your help. You know sometimes it's not the help you get but the fact that someone else is trying that makes the difference to your sanity!

Thanks

John

[mjc]

Well ZA is like that..it is very good at what it does, preventing access, sometimes too good. Some of its restrictions are designed so that even if it were disabled by a malicious program it would prevent it from accessing the network and spreading. The only problem I see is that when it was "off" you couldn't make any changes to the previous config, because it didn't know you were wanting to.

One piece of advise I have seen a couple of places, is that if you are trying to set up a network and are having problems, even if ZA is off, is to uninstall it anyway. Then to reinstall it after the network is running (just don't allow outside access until you are done)

[johnyuka]

Hey MJC,

yeah i saw that advice too! just didn't know that the people at Acer installed Zona Alarm by default! It was even hidden in a system folder rather than being in the programs folder.

I guess the new advice is to see whether the manufacturer has sneaked a disabled copy onto the pc without telling you and hid it somewhere whacky!

Thanks for all your help again all.

cheers

John