Trouble networking ME and XP

N

Nickp

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Spent yesterday trying to network a Win ME machine with a Win XP (SP1) Machine. No luck at all.

Hardware setup is a realtek RTL8139 NIC in each of the machines connected, with straight through cables, to a netgear DS104 (4 port hub).

Looked at a few guides, ran through them - set up TCP/IP with IPs of 192.168.1.1 and 192.168.1.2 with a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0, enabled NetBIOS shared C on both of the machines, both are on the same workgroup (MSHOME), nothing happened.

The machines can't see each other, the hub shows that thay are both sending packets, but neither machine receives anything (I looked in the XP status - 0 packets received). Can't ping either way.

Tried it again this morning to see if I could figure out what I'd missed, but now the ME machine does't even connect to the hub, it just says media disconnected in winipcfg, even the though hub indicates traffic from the machine during boot up.

Any ideas?

I'm hoping its something fairly simple and obvious that I've missed, but I've checked it pretty thoroughly :(

Thanks in advance

Nick
 
Realtec are a known problem NIC.
Try moving them out of PCI slot 1.

Better still change them for something else.
 
Seems like a good idea, I had tried connecting the machines with a crossover cable before without much success. What would you anyone recommend as a good card on a budget?
 
Most cheap NICs are fine.
Its realtek (and 3com too) you hear problems with.

Linksys or Netgear you might consider.

If one is a laptop you might consider a couple of wireless cards.
 
Thanks for the advice.

I'll probably go with Netgear cards as I've got a Netgear hub.
 
Just in case anyone else has a similar problem, I eventually found a solution:

Un-install Norton Personal Firewall 2002!!

I tried everything and eventually came accross a post where someone had been having a similar problem, so I un-installed it (it was only on the XP machine) and everything just worked!

Hope this helps someone
 
When you log on have you set up passwords? If not and you log on w/o passwords networking won't work as you are not authenticating the user logging on. if a user isn't authenticated trying to get even simple networks to function becomes almost impossible. I have heard of drives being shared with un authenticated users but then you get into shares and permissions which can be a bear to novice admins. :)

Good luck.
 
Try installing NetBeui on both Windows XP and Windows ME. I had a similar problem connecting ME to XP via laplink cables and this solved it. Netbeui isn't installed as default on Windows XP. It should be on your installation CD. In WinME you should be able to install it from the network settings applet in control panel.

I'll see if I can find the guide I used and post it on here.

Hope this helps.
 

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