I work for a guy who has a small business network and this morning he started having trouble. The other day I went there to do some hardware upgrades and install a firewall. I first installed Sygate a while ago but that wouldn't let me share files how I wanted so I uninstalled it and put ZoneAlarm in its place. It was working fine until this morning when all of the sudden he couldn't connect to this one machine which is his "server". The server is also a workstation that was in use today. The weird thing is the "server" can view all of the other computers on the network and their shares. The computer can even paste files into shared directories on the other computers.

I have no idea what is wrong, I have tried running the network setup utility several times and have done everything else that I know about. The other day I tried a different router because two of the machines were giving me an error after trying to acquire a network address and said that it had limited or no connectivity when it worked fine. The new router had no impact on this error or anything else.

The machines are, one has Windows 98, two have XP Pro Service Pack 2 and the "server" has XP Pro Service Pack 1. I rolled one of the computers back and removed Service pack 2 but nothing changed. I have no idea what is going on and it is pretty important that I fix this as soon as possible.

Thanks.

Some things u can check:

Ping working to server ?

Workgroup name good ?

Ip range good ?

No Conflicts ?

Firewalls PROPER de-installed ? XP SP II firewals off ?

DHCP running ? By rooter ? DHCP Pool big enough ? If dhcp is running let al machines get ip from Dhcp.

If fixed ip check iprange on machines, workgroup, and subnetmask.

If the router/swicht has an reset button - press it.

Take a look at the running processes and maybe some things can be killed. Spyware stuff or so.

In network enviroment press f5 a few times. or try unc path to server ex. \\server\pronpics

Technicly on ehternet it can take 1 hour to see al nodes in lan.

Make sure pings are working on both machines . And once they acquire ip and u get same prob try reinstalling FILE AND PRINT SHARING in ur network conenction properties . ALso CLIENT FOR MICROSOFT NETWORKS ...


Use static ip directly if u get prob with dhcp

Great ideas, one thing I am having trouble with is entering the switch through IE. I know on my router at home it is 192.168.0.1 and I tried with that new Linksys 8-port workgroup switch to enter on 192.168.1.1 as per some website suggested but I couldn't get in on any machine. Does linksys use any other addresses for their hardware? Also anyone know of a list of addresses for 3com switches?

For your switch problem to go to http config check the device's manual for the default ip and default pasword.

If somebody changed is use Look@lan (freeware) to scan some ranges in your lan.
Maybe the router or swicht wil pop up there. If that doesnt work instal anasil 2.2 (full working trial) and sniff your lan. Anasil wil find it.

Then browse to it, enter default pas

admin
admin / admin
root / root
or something like this.

I went in yesterday and the network was back up. The manual sucks... gives no information at all, basically says "Plugs stuff in here". Anyway, thanks fr the help, I'll probably need it later

it is a possiblity that zonealarm is intervering (blocking netbios?), try it with ZA turned off.