Win98/XP Networking

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I made the ultimate mistake-bought a Dell Inspiron 8100 with XP Home on it. Set up the networking and attached the network cable to the network (4 win98 desktops of varying vintages and 1 portable w/win98) made the disk from XP for networking, and ran it on two of the machines. Checked before and after netsetup.exe. The XP machine can see itself. The Win98 machines can all see each other. None can find the XP and vice-versa. The network is a hub and connected to the internet thru a cable modem. The XP has no trouble going “on line” thru the hub and modem. Nor do the Win98 machines. ZoneAlarm is installed on ALL the machines. Any ideas? After 2 years of troubleshooting and maintaining the original network I’m stymied by the “hands off” nature of windows XP’s networking. Thx.
Don

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Snoop around in the XP forum.

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Thanks. I tried. Didn’t find anything that helped although I did install NetBEIU on the XP machine. The XP is still the only machine on the network it sees and none of the Win98/SE machines can see it although they can see each other just fine. The XP also sees all my neighbors machines on the cable modem network while the W98’s do not. Could the ZoneAlarm have anything to do with all this? It’s installed on all the machines and basically self configured.
Don

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You may have to add the id’s for the old net into Zone Alarm under the local zone advanced settings. I had the same problem with Zone Alarm Pro not too long ago. Just checked the box next to the id as Zone Alarm Pro saw it but didn’t know if it was friendly until then. :>

The Old One

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Tried it. Zone Alarm didn’t list ANY computers on XP nor on the original network on ANY of the machines. Perhaps it’s a ‘haunt…Thanks for the info anyway-it’s good to know what’s supposed to be-even if it’s not!

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TRy adding the addresses in the local zone contants. If there are none there zone alarm isn’t working properly. I use ZA pro but it should still be the same.

Tom

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I had the same problem. Open Zone Alarm to the security page, click advanced, select the local zone contents. It will show all the pc’s on the net one or more of the boxes will not be checked/selected on each machine. Once you check them and tell ZA they are friendly everything should run fine.

Tom

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Sorry about the double post, didn’t think the first one went through.

Tom

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I’d be suspicious of Zone Alarm, especially if it’s the Free version. I have an XP system hooked up to cable and a Win98 machine networked with, sharing the internet connection through ICS. It worked for a couple of months, and then when @home switched over to attbi, the Win98 machine lost its access to the internet (network still worked, however). I removed Zone Alarm from both machines, used the WInXP firewall, and everything worked again. Realize this is not ideal, but all I’ve got for now. I discussed this on the news.grc.com newsgroup, and it sounds like Zone Alarm Pro has some additional security settings that should allow it work on this setup, but I’m waiting to verify that it will work before laying down the money for it. Below is a copy of the conversation thread from that discussion (I think the responder – Marcus – works/worked in Zone Alarm tech support):

Hi Joe,

You should see in your alerts entries for DHCP and/or DNS. If so, they
will most likely need to be added to your trusted local zone. Since most
ISPs use multiple servers, you may want to contact them and ask them what to
input for these values – just collect the information. Then, IF you see
DHCP, I’d add that to the Local Zone. Etc. If you didn’t see DHCP and had a
connection, I wouldn’t mess with it. Also check other programs. There is a
big difference between “I can’t connect at all”, to “I can get email but
can’t browse”, to I can browse but can’t get email/news”, to… etc.

Marcus
PEACE

“Joe S” wrote in message
news:a1lt6r$289j$1@news.grc.com…
Thanks for the response, Marcus

By that do you mean the DHCP and DNS settings assigned automatically by my
ISP (I see the values that are set by running ipconfig – I’m using XP –
though I suppose these can be reset by the ISP at any time)?

I’m a newbie at understanding how all of this works, but wouldn’t doing that
basically give my ISP or the internet access to my local network?

Joe

“Marcus Castro” wrote in message
news:a1lqv2$25t5$1@news.grc.com…
> Hi Joe,
>
> I think that the only possible workaround is to add the servers (DHCP
and
> DNS) to the trusted Local Zone, be sure to keep that set to Medium.
>
> Marcus
> PEACE

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Thank you all. I’ve tried all of the solutions but either I can’t (ZoneAlarm won’t let me add settings on the security page) or they didn’t work. I have a network tech friend who has agreed to come over and take a crack at my lashup. He runs a corporate intranet with mixed machines and he sounded puzzled when I described the problem so I certain it’s beyond me. But…Thanks again for all the attempts. I’ll check in often-perhaps I can help someone else.
PS I’ll let you all know what he finds on this thread.

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