net/HELP!!! possibly a domain problem....

[cyphen]

Hey folks. I know just enough about networking to be dangerous to myself!

Here's the sit...
got a home peer network with 98, 2000 and 2 XP computers.

i was going to set up Mandrake Linux on my desknote (which currently has XP home) and i wanted to create a ghost image of it before i went through the install. This is presenting a problem.

I bought Ghost 2003 (because it had a windows interface and my desknote doesn't have a floppy, and i only have 1 partition on the drive, so i have to image it over the network)

for some reason, my network has been browsing very slowly. Transfers happen quickly, but browsing is slow. i think this is part of the problem i'm having. I think my roommates XP might be running the browsing service, and it may be wreaking havoc - or perhaps he isn't in the same workgroup.

Anyway, to make a long story longer, i can't get my xp desknote to interface with my 98 machine (which has ample hard drive space for the image file) under DOS. Apparently Ghost 2003 oh has a windows interface and it actually creates a virtual partition in which it loads dos and can take care of network support. I found all the DOS client stuff, and after much aggravation got a lot of things working. I can now use the net commands. but when i do net view i get nothing. Also, net diag fails to commuinicate between the machines.

I noticed during the setup of everything that it made me put in a domain name - but i don't have a domain controller. I'm on a simple peer network. Do i have to set up a domain in order to do this? Where am i going wrong?

net view tells me that "the list of servers for this workgroup is not currently available." I updated the LMHOSTS file with the ip address of my 98 machine, but to no avail.

anybody got any ideas???? please???? I'm going crazy here!!! (oh, also, the Dos Client install made me type in a domain name too. I just put "workgroup" which is the name of my workgroup. - i know, real creative name!)

Thanks in advance.
-cy

Oh, BTW - i also have a cable modem and it's hooked into a router, which has DHCP.

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okay - i got 'em to talk. DUH! had one on tcp/ip, and the desknote running netbeui.... just added netbeui to my '98 machine and logged right in!

still confused about the domain issue though.