Win98 Peer-To-Peer Network Problem

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Hello –

I am having some trouble setting up a peer-to-peer network in Windows 98 and I am not sure if there might be a network specialist reading these postings that might give me a hand.

There are two machines, connected through ethernet cards with a cross-over cable. The first is a laptop, the other is a desktop. They did talk together once by this arrangement, but that is all. I have not been able to get them to do so since.

They are both running Windows 98 (one is SE and the other is not), and have the client for Microsoft networking installed. They are both using Dial Up networking for access to the internet, and both have 10/100 auto-sensing ethernet cards. Each has a static IP address on the TCP/IP protocol of the card. 192.168.0.1 & 2 respectively, with a 255.255.255.0 subnet. They are both identified individually, and in the same workgroup. I have reinstalled the protocol, the card (except for physical removal), and tried updating (and reverting) the drivers. I have also tried to rename/rebuild the workgroup, but to no avail. None of these actions seem to have worked.

Here is the strange symptoms that I am seeing. When I set a continuous ping from the laptop to the desktop, I do not get a response, except when it is in the process of logging into or out of Windows. At these moments, for a few seconds I get happy replies from my pinging. After a few moments, this response stops. I would expect it when I am logging out, but not when I am logging in. At these moments, I can browse the other computer, until the response stops. I wanted to try to get this to work before I did a reinstall of Windows, since I plan to use the extra hard drive capacity desktop as a backup device for the laptop.

Does anyone have any ideas about this? Any suggestions would be gratefully received.

Thank you,
John Daily

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What hard drives and printers have turned the “Sharing on” on?

DaveA I am so far behind, I think I am First
Genealogy....confusing the dead and annoying the living

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Do you have any firewalls installed? They won’t have any effect until they have reached the top of the Startup queue, but a good one will hide all the ports after it has loaded. If you allow those addresses access, that might solve the problem – and hope noone sinister read them here! You can give too much information.

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In dealing with my P2P networks, I have never tried configuring with static IP addresses. Unless there is a specific reason for this, perhaps you should try connecting with both ethernet cards obtaining their IP addresses automatically. Another suggestion, FWIW, is that I have never been able to get two W98 machines to talk without both having NetBUI and IPX protocols installed in addition to TCP/IP. Not that having extra protocols is desirable from a security standpoint, but you might want to give that a try. Hope that helps!

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Thanks for the input that I have received thus far. in answer to some of the points asked:

The drives on both machines are shared and one printer on one machine. These are only bound to the IP of the ethernet cards and not to the dial-up adapter. There are no fire-walls installed on these machines, since they are only dial connectivity (but I expect to get that fixed soon).

I chose to use statically assigned (non-routable) addresses so that I could do some trouble shooting, as I did not want to have to find out the IP addresses on each machine every time I made a change. As for the preference for IP: I am more comfortable with the tools available to be able to detailed trouble shooting.

I appreciate any additional insight you-all might have.

Thanks,
John D

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Okay, given your preference for static IP’s, have you tried any of the above suggestions (including obtaining IP addresses automatically)?

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I had tried NetBEUI, and IPX, but not recently. I tried again with NetBEUI, which did not work. I have also tried adding the static entries to the LMHOSTS file, which handled the name resolution to an IP, but it do not allow for communication, except as before (during the process of logging in or out).

I will try the IPX again, but probably I will try to do a filtered start-up of the different items that I am loading to see if there is something in this that is the problem.

I do not have any firewalls installed at the moment, but there was a VPN set-up on both machines at one point. This was for when I was working out of an office. I am no longer connecting to this office anymore and it was no longer needed. This has supposedly been removed (according to Windows Add/Remove Programs), but one can never be sure…

I fear it is looking more and more like I will have to take more drastic measures to resolve this…

Any additional thoughts?

John D

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Hi Ian –

I don’t have zone alarm, but there is some more detail in my reply to Keely.

Thanks,
John D

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At one time, when I was running Win98 FE, I had a simular problem. I solved it by installing Windows 98 over itself, and it work every time.

DaveA I am so far behind, I think I am First
Genealogy....confusing the dead and annoying the living

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