Direct Connect

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I’ve set up a Direct Connect between two PC’s. The OldPC runs as a host using Win98. The NewPC runs as a guest using Windows Media Center. The Network Connections shows that the NewPC is connected to the OldPC and I can ping it using the IP address successfully. On the NewPC in DOS I type ftp OldPC and I get the error message Unknown host OldPC. I get the same error using the IP address. I don’t know what to try next. Anyone have any ideas?

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You’d need an FTP server running on the Win98 box to be able to connect in this fashion. The NewPC is trying to look up the host or IP address and open the FTP port, which doesn’t exist – hence your error message.

You can map a network drive, either in Explorer or through the command line, and share files that way. In fact, it would probably work better than FTP anyway. What exactly are you trying to accomplish between the two machines?

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Hi Mark,

Thanks for the post back. I’m trying to copy large files from the OldPC to the NewPC and then get rid of the OldPC.

I forgot about needing an FTP server. However, I’ll try to map a network drive to it and see what happens. If it works, I can then copy it to the NewPC. For some reason I thought FTP was the only method that would work. Never used Direct Connect before. I’ll post back and let you know what happened. Thanks.

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Your other option, would be to take the HD from the Old PC, and (for a short time) install it in the New PC.

If you felt like having more space on the New PC, you could leave the Old HD in there afterwards. Of course, this wouldn’t work if you have plans to use the Old PC in another capacity as something other than a foot rest .

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Chris, thanks for the other option of installing it on the NewPC. I did think about it except I’m not that knowledgable under the hood about how to make it connect to the NewPC. But I will leave that as a very last resort.

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Hi Mark,

After creating a shared drive on the OldPC with the share name “edrive” with full rights I tried to map it from the NewPC in windows explorer. I entered in OldPCedrive as the path and it came back with the message “The network path OldPCedrive could not be found.”

When I do ipconfig I see “PPP adapter OldPC:” and it shows the ip address. I can ping it by ip address but when I ping it by name (OldPC) I get the message “Ping request could not find host OldPC. Please check the name and try again.” Both ipconfing and My Nework Places shows OldPC as the name. I hope that’s a clue to someone.

I guess another approach is creating an ftp server on the OldPC. Is that easy to do? I’ll try a search on this board and see if anything comes up.

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Try replacing ‘OldPC’ with the IPAddress in the mapping. example : 10.10.10.3share_name

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Mark and Chris,

Just a follow up on this problem. I finally got everything to work right. It turned out to be a Zone Alarm problem. On the OldPC it didn’t have a Zone Alarm icon in the system tray so I didn’t think anything of it. Then I decide to uninstall it completely since it won’t be needed anyway. When I did that ZA recognized that I was trying to uninstall it and popped up a message box to that affect. So it had to have been running in the background. I then went back to the NewPC. I was able to create a network drive and copy the files over.

Thanks for all your suggestions.

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