Ready for work?

[DarkNexxus]

Heres what I have.

Win98SE
Athlon Processor 1.3Ghz
384 Megs SDRAM Memory
40 Gig Hard drive with over 20 gigs free
32 Meg SiS PCI video card
No modem
Memorex DVD + RW/CD-RW Combo internal
3.5 Floppy
AC-97 on board sound

I thinks thats the basics. Now heres the problem. I have a dsl connection, the way it works it comes off the dsl modem into a hub, that hub connects into 3 computers, (including the one listed) and another hub which connects to two other computers. All the computers except for the one above were running at full Duplex, so I bought a CNet Pro200WL PCI card and plugged it in. I did not hook up the wake up on LAN stuff, I don't use it. I installed the drivers from the disk and I get the following message on boot up:

Your network adapter CNet Pro200 PCI Fast Ethernet Adapter ((long space here)) (0001) is not working properly. You may need to set it up again. For more information, see the Network Troubleshooting in Windows Help.

I avoided the troubleshooting, past experience has shown thats about as good as a thump to the head. I did toy with the setup program to no avail. I checked the site for new drivers and it seems I have the current drivers V. 1.52. Basically I'm lost. I've removed and re-installed it a few times already all with the same results. It shows on the hub in full duplex mode. Since the other machines are all XP, I can't verify if it's on the network though. I could be wrong on this, but didn't Intel put out a similar card like this?

[John Prophet]

is there another slot you can try it in?

does it show up in device manager? does it have any yellow exclams or question marks by it?

in case its an irq conflict try moving to another slot and/or...going into bios and disabling any unneeded stuff such as serial ports and/or parallel ports which use up irq's.

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you can also try the self ping..go to dos prompt and do "ping 127.0.0.1"

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I never heard of a setup that shares dsl thru a hub....is that the way it is supposed to work? I guess you are saying you are getting internet on the other machines though?

Because usually you need a router to give out additional IP addresses etc.

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----"Since the other machines are all XP, I can't verify if it's on the network though."

you can still verify if you are on the network either by pinging those machines by their IP addresses...or by seeing if you can see their shared files.....you have to make sure the W98 machine has the same workgroup name...w98 comes with the name "workgroup" so it needs to be changed to match the default name "mshome" that comes on xp machines.

then you should be able to see those other machines in your "network neighborhood"....and if you want to share files FROM the 98 machine you have to go to network properties and turn on "file and printer sharing"..then right click the files or folder you want to share and enable sharing etc.

make sure the firewalls are off on the xp machines

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if the w98 machine has a blank space in the name the xp machines may have trouble seeing it..so "bobs comp" would need to be changed to "bobscomp"

JP

[DarkNexxus]

Originally posted by John Prophet
is there another slot you can try it in?

Either you read my mind or I read yours as you were posting. I have five total with two in use. So I put it in another one. A funny thing happened. My bios updated itself and it found the card again, this time without errors of any kind, but it's not connecting to the DHCP servers. It's reaching the hub though.

does it show up in device manager? does it have any yellow exclams or question marks by it?

It did, yes. It said it wasn't working.

in case its an irq conflict try moving to another slot and/or...going into bios and disabling any unneeded stuff such as serial ports and/or parallel ports which use up irq's.

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you can also try the self ping..go to dos prompt and do "ping 127.0.0.1"

Thats an idea I didn't think of. ^.^ I tried pinging a few sites but never my own machine. I'll try it after it reboots.

It brought back that dreaded log in for Net Meeting box. I'll have to kill that somehow. It's back up again but still no connection to the DHCP servers. I run IP monster on it so I can tell nearly right away. I'm getting that internet connection problem. Let my try the self ping. Self ping was good. 4 sent, 4 recieved.

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I never heard of a setup that shares dsl thru a hub....is that the way it is supposed to work? I guess you are saying you are getting internet on the other machines though?

Our ISP allows us up to 4 ips per account. But my roomie is a net tech and I play with computers for fun. Together we figured out their so called 'custom solution' for more ips. Extra hubs. We should have a router for safety, but we each run a personal firewall.

Because usually you need a router to give out additional IP addresses etc.

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----"Since the other machines are all XP, I can't verify if it's on the network though."

you can still verify if you are on the network either by pinging those machines by their IP addresses...or by seeing if you can see their shared files.....you have to make sure the W98 machine has the same workgroup name...w98 comes with the name "workgroup" so it needs to be changed to match the default name "mshome" that comes on xp machines.

Some kinda of flaw there. XP won't see 98 and vice versa without a cross over cable. I fought that theory for two days without luck. I wish there was a way. But for now I had an external drive and an external CD writer to share files with that computer.

then you should be able to see those other machines in your "network neighborhood"....and if you want to share files FROM the 98 machine you have to go to network properties and turn on "file and printer sharing"..then right click the files or folder you want to share and enable sharing etc.

make sure the firewalls are off on the xp machines

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if the w98 machine has a blank space in the name the xp machines may have trouble seeing it..so "bobs comp" would need to be changed to "bobscomp"

No blank spaces. That computer is called Win98, this one is EmachineDave, the others are named similar. All one long word or one short word.

JP

[John Prophet]

ok..the thing about xp and 98 and the crossover cable is wrong..the crossover cable has nothing to do with the operating system...it has to do with what equipment you are trying to hook up.

if you are going from a network card to a network card u need the crossover

if from a network card to a hub you dont need a crossover

if from a hub to a hub to do need a crossover

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now...lots of hubs and routers etc have what they call "uplink" ports...these ports THEMSELVES are ALREADY "crossed over"....

so for instance if you have 2 hubs you can use a regular cable between them if you come out of ONE of the uplink ports into the regular port on the other hub. (it gets a little confusing, lol)

so basically if you are hooking to a similar pice of equipment (hub to hub) or (nic to nic) then you need 1 "crossover"..it can be a crossover cable or a "crossover port" which is usually called an "uplink" port.

if you go from uplink port to uplink port you have, in effect "cancelled out" the crossover cuz it was crossovered TWICE...so it was crossoverd then uncrossovered!! lol.

so to go from uplink port to uplink port youd STILL need a crossover cable.

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lots of new hubs etc are autosensing where the detect what kind of cable it is and it works either way..with or without crossover cable etc.

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if you have the nic working now in the w98se box...go to the run box and type in "winipcfg"...make sure the nic is in the little drop down window...then do "release all" and then "renew all"..and see if it gives you a good ip address.



JP

[DarkNexxus]

I have the autosensing hub and full duplex modems aka auto sensing. I'm hoping using these will allow me to connect these two together but I'm not holding my breath. =)

On the winipcfg thing. No go. Tried that and it failed to connect. It seems we have a very odd issue around our place as well as a few others on the web.

In our case whenever we add a new computer or a new nic card to the network, it will not work. No matter what we do, it just refuses to connect to the DHCP server. In the past I've tried formatting etc. Matter of fact I even left a post on it here as the user Denmaster. But I forgot my password and had to trash the email I had back then. So I got a new username. Normally if we leave this go for a few days, it just magically (like lucky charms) starts working.

Heres an example. A friend brought his Toshiba laptop by yesterday for me to work on. I've worked on this before and I know the nic card is good in it. I hooked it into my network and it wouldn't connect. I unplugged the cable, put it back in the regular computer, hit the IE button and boom, was surfing the web. But the Toshiba I had to make do with dial up. Odd isn't it?

[John Prophet]

I bet it is something along the lines of..the isp has sensed that you have used the 4 connections and it wont dish out anymore.

maybe a call to the isp is in order...tell them you had a laptop hooked up temorarily but now you need to hook up a seperate machine for good etc.

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you should still be able to ping the other machines from the w98se machine...ping them by ip address or even maybe comp name

try to ping the other machines just to make sure you have basic connectivity.

JP

[DarkNexxus]

Tried that too. No such luck. Currently only 2 machines are hooked up to the network successfully. We've been running five pcs though for over a year now. If they know it, they would have shut us down. My roommate doesn't leave his up though. Mine is up so is my wife's. The one I'm trying to get going is my backup/file sharing one.

Edit: Tried pinging this computer. Got failed packets each time. Tried by computer ip, name, and computer ISP ip.

[John Prophet]

---->"Tried pinging this computer. Got failed packets each time. Tried by computer ip, name, and computer ISP ip."

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then there is no chance it can get to the dhcp server etc.

somehow it is a connectivity problem..you need to try another setup somehow..another cable or hookup until you can get connectivity and be able to ping the other comps etc and mainly ping the dsl modem....I am not sure what the modem ip would be...usually they are 192.168.0.1 or 192.168.1.1..but it could be different

[DarkNexxus]

It's something along those lines. Like I said, it's mostly a backup pc. I wish I could figure out what the devil this network issue was though. I could work around it probably. Add another line to the computer and plug in another card, use the old linksys till the new card was recognized, but I'm willing to give it some time and see. My problem is I don't know if the card is the problem or if it really is the network issue. Got a ball bat handy?

[John Prophet]

didnt u say you could self ping the card now? using ping 127.0.0.1

if it pings itself ok then its NOT the card its the cables or hubs etc