Annoyances.org - re: Question about 'Connect to a Windows XP or 2000 system with a Windows 95, 98, or Me system over a Network' (Windows 2000 Discussion Forum)


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re: Question about 'Connect to a Windows XP or 2000 system with a Windows 95, 98, or Me system over a Network'
Wednesday, May 14, 2003 at 6:10 am
Windows 2000 Annoyances Discussion Forum
Posted by arik (1 messages posted)

This asswer is to all of you asking about connecting win200, XP, 98,ME in a home network setup. as you know, It doesent work the first time. if it worked - buy a lottery ticket - you are the luckiest person on this earth. The good news is that it can work. I just solved a major problem I had connecting 4 computers in a home networking enviroment. one is 98, one ME, one 2000, one XP. it began with 3x98 and 1xME. all worked fine. when I installed 2000 on one 98 computer, and XP on the other... first, I could not see the ME. At all. Not even a ping. that was solved by replacing my hub's power supply (it took me 4 nights to accidently figure that out - the ME is connected with a very long cable, and probably because of that only works at 10MBPS. the longer cable just found a common problem - bad power supplies, bad hubs and bad connections are a more common cause for network problem than anything else. so - when you have problems - get a simple cross cable and tart by connecting the computer to each other one by one. when they all see each other in pairs - start reconnecting to your hub or switch. second problem: when I tried to connect to the 2000 computer, it worked from XP, but not from 98 or ME. I could see them but got a message asking for some unknown password. I use a fixed password for everything at home - its the only password I type in' and yet it didnt worked. it couldent connct to a resource called ICP$ or IPC$... whatever. that had something to do with software, not hardware. I tried to play with the 2000, with the XP to figure out what it could connect, I tried different things, ane ended up making the previously available XP a second version of the win 2000 with the stupid password thing. Now I had to computers with the same problem. the 2000 was solved by uninstalling and re installing the network drivers and services, reconfiguring the IP addresses and so on. the XP problem was immuned to this tritment. I even mannaged to get things worse: I could ping all computers from the XP, but all other computers could not ping it! and yet, misteriously, pcanywere form XP could controll all the other computer (that requires 2 way communication) so again, hardware is fine - its a software thing. I first managed to get it back to being pingable by disabling the XP firewall. I accidently turned it on before. now I could see it again, but had the IPC$ thing (or is it ICP$?) looking for an unknown password. That was solved by selecting computer managment from control panel, in acounts, there is a place you select who can connect to the commputer. make sure you have "everyone" on the list! thats it! simple isnt it?... I hope it helps Bye Arik. PS I have no idea if it helps, dut someone told me it speeds things up: search for the file "lmhosts". you will find a sample file that explains how to prepare an lmhosts file. do it, and save as lmhosts without an extention. it tels the computer what to look fore if the auto search fails. some more important info that might help: use TCP/IP, remove NETBEUI. in tcp/ip settings: set IP addresses: 192.168.1.X set subnet mask: 255.255.255.0 x is 1 to 4 in my case. In lmhost I have: 192.168.1.1 mycomp #pre 192.168.1.2 wifecomp #pre 192.168.1.3 soncomp #pre 192.168.1.4 dogcomp #pre The #pre means it pre loaded, befor the net search, so the computer has an idea what to look for, or at leat gives to the link right away. "mycomp" "wifecomp" soncomp" "dogcomp" are the names I asign to my computers. (I'm always asked why my dog needs a computer. well duh! figure it out by yourself.) the numbers are IP addresses, and everything here needs to corespond to the actual settings on the differnt computers. Bye. Now it for real. Arik.