setting up a home network

[madmankinu]

Ok, first off, let me say this board has been a big help figureing out my problem. I would like to thank you all for the advise you have given here. I have been working in the computer industry for over 8 years now and understand that everyone's time and effort is vauleable.

With that said, here is my dilema. I just recently upgraded all of my machines in my home office to XP. For the past three nights, I have been trying to setup a simple home network that would allow all the users to share documents and files. I am on a Cable modem connected to a Linksys router, the 4-port non-wireless one. All machines are setup with static IPs, like I see alot of you mention in here. I used Microsoft's wonderful new network setup wizard, reboot, and amazingly, I can't see anything on the network except myself on each of the machines. I figure that maybe something is wrong with my router. So, I try to ping each machine by name. Nothing. Then I try to ping by IP. Responce. Ok, so its not the router. Now what? Change network cards. Nope, still nothing. Change Cables. Still nothing.

So, after three nights I was about to give up. Then, I tried something that I thought shouldn't be able to work, I did a start run to the IP address of the other machines. ????? Pretty much was the look on my face. It worked. I could take back and forth to all the machines in the network by using the IP address of the machine. I could see all files and create and transfer files.

So my question to you all now is, why can't I get to the machine by name? If I don't get an answer, no big deal since I can still go by ip, but this has really been bugging me for three days now. Ideas? Thoughts? Comments? Laughing yet? I am now.

[dumdum]

http://www.practicallynetworked.com/...icbroblems.htm

that page will take you to this page:

http://www.practicallynetworked.com/...hoot/netbt.htm

this is a great network troubleshooting site

[Terry Zaperach]

Out of curiosity, did you map a drive from your main computer to each of the others on your network?

[Pakalolo]

All machines are setup with static IPs

Machines are using static IP's instead of receiving an IP from a DHCP server- you have no mechanism in place to do address to name resolution. (does that make sense?)

Since you are manually assigning IP addresses you must also do the IP address to name conversion manually. To do this you must edit the HOSTS file on each machine...

Open the "HOSTS" file on each machine with "NOTEPAD", it should be in the following directory- "C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc"

you should see the following information-

# This file contains the mappings of IP addresses to host names. Each
# entry should be kept on an individual line. The IP address should
# be placed in the first column followed by the corresponding host name.
# The IP address and the host name should be separated by at least one
# space.
#
# Additionally, comments (such as these) may be inserted on individual
# lines or following the machine name denoted by a '#' symbol.
#
# For example:
#
#      102.54.94.97     rhino.acme.com          # source server
#       38.25.63.10     x.acme.com              # x client host
127.0.0.1       localhost

Add the IP Address and Machine name for each computer on your LAN, so it looks something like this:

127.0.0.1              localhost
10.10.0.100            madmankinu                # madman's pc
10.10.0.101            computer1                 # pc1
10.10.0.102            computer2                 # pc2

You can delete all of the text above the localhost entry. Make sure that you save it as "ALL FILES" with no extension, it is common for people to edit this file and forget to remove the .txt extension from the end of it. (You do not want a HOSTS.TXT file)

Hopefully that makes sense, if not let me know and I'll try and clarify

Pakalolo

[madmankinu]

Thanks for the info, I will try this tonight. The one question I have in responce to the host files is why in this day and age of technology, why should we need them? These weren't needed when I had 98 machines. I would assume, that with XP being so advanced, it would be able to know. Just a question. Thanks again for the help. I will let you know if that worked.

[Pakalolo]

The one question I have in responce to the host files is why in this day and age of technology, why should we need them? These weren't needed when I had 98 machines. I would assume, that with XP being so advanced, it would be able to know.

Not true- hosts files have been around since Network servers were an old 386 in an AT case turned on it's side...

The hosts file provides a simple, easy way for a small LAN to provide IP Address to Name translation. There are automated ways of doing this- The combination of DHCP, DNS & WINS servers working together on your LAN- make using a hosts file obsolete!

All you need to do is configure each of the servers above on your LAN with the your local clients info and you'll be set!

If that's not an option you will need to manually enter the data in to a hosts file and save a copy to each clients machine....

There is no "easier" way, sorry!

[madmankinu]

Yeah, I remember those days. I got an old 286 from my high school that didn't even have windows 3.1 on it. Thanks for all your help. It works perfectly now.