Home network

Discussion in 'Other Trades Talk' started by Markybob, May 9, 2004.

  1. Markybob

    Markybob New Member

    Any of you computers guys be able to help?

    Have just installed a new computer at home, it is exactly the same set up as the dead one, has windows 2000, the other computers are win 98 (2) and for some reason I cannot configure the network, it did work last night but my son shut the pc's down last night and since turning them back on the two 98' machines see eachove as usual but the 2k machine is doesnt' se anything

    any help much appreciated as this is now doing my head

    cheers

    mark
     
  2. Al-Yeti

    Al-Yeti New Member

    Make sure Netbeu is installed and IPX
    Also it maynot me looking for a workgroup as 2000
    can be setup for a domain check it,

    also search by using find computer by name and by ip
     
  3. TonkaToy

    TonkaToy New Member

    Why on earth would you want to use NETBEUI or IPX???

    IPX is a protocol designed by Novell and was used on their earlier Netware networks, NETBEUI is a ***** protocol that should be removed from all machines.

    Use TCP/IP, and make sure that you're either using DHCP which allocates all of the relevant TCP/IP information (the setting is "obtain IP address automatically") or if you allocate IP addresses manually make sure that they are all in the same range with the same subnet mask.

    Check all physical connections as well.
     
  4. Markybob

    Markybob New Member

    Cheers guys, found problem to be the firewall, using norton... the neworked machines are within the "trusted zone" but I found if you disable norton firewall completely everything comes back online. when i re-enable it, they stay online, just doesn't seem to work from startup.... Bizaar

    Any Ideas why my mps skip during playback? they are fine on all the other machines, just this one?

    Thanks again

    Markybob
     
  5. Markybob

    Markybob New Member

    sorry.... typo MP3's
     
  6. Mr MAN

    Mr MAN New Member

    Apologies for the essay - but worth a read if you wanna to know what to do properly - enjoy..........


    hmmm - ipx - as somebody else said, don't bother, however there are some cases in which you may want ipx such as shared game connecitons. Basically only install ipx/spx if you have a specific requirement – believe me, I’ve been in IT now for 15 years and you know it makes sense!!!!

    It wont matter if you have an isp connection of not - configure tcp/ip properly - if you have an isp then ensure the incoming connection is into a windows XP system - this will make life easy for you.

    1) Incoming connection into XP - turn on the XP firewall and ensure it’s sp1 with all available updates (get them from http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com) – this is because most recent viruses attack services that run in the NT arena (services don’t execute in the same way under win9x, I’ll get into that later if you really want!!).

    2) Install second lan card into xp system - this you connects to your home networking hub - and connect all other systems to this hub

    3) Use the home networking wizard to setup your home network - this will set the primary lan card or dial connection – whatever (to your isp) to dhcp from your provider and the second lan card to 192.168.0.1 with a subnet of 255.255.255.0
    4) now hook up the other boxes and set the tcp/ip clients to optain an address automatically.

    Basically the xp box will now feed ipaddresses of 192.168.0.2 and above up to 255 for the rest of your lan and it doesn’t matter if the client is a win9x (5,8,me) or winnt (3.5x, 4, 2k or xp) or above flavour.

    All clear so far - now firewall properly - Norton is clumsy and not so easy to configure as you’ve already seen so I normally install BlackIce (otherwise known at Network Ice) for my clients - do a search on the web and you'll find it.

    After install goto the settings "Tools/Edit Settings" goto tab "intrusion detection" and click add. Now enter the scope of your new local LAN - click "ADD", in the IP box type 192.168.0.1-192.168.0.255, check "Add a firewall entry" and you're all sorted.
    A note for your windows 98 clients - if they don't logon properly it's normally because they’ve started up without actually logging onto the network - have a look on the start menu - is there a logoff option and if not then they are not logged on. Sometimes you’ll find they have a logoff icon even if they are not logged on – simple test is to logoff and logon again – does it now work? To get them logging on there are some registry fixes - let me know and I'll assist.
    Also as a note – do not create shares with a blank password, especially if they reside at the root of a drive (i.e. C as a share name for the root of drive C: with no password) this is a major “no no” and a massively vulnerable system - so don’t do it.

    To explain Norton’s behaviour – not bizarre at all, what is happening is once a connection is initiated then Norton will not kill it – hence you stop the service connect and then restart and it’s ignoring the already open connections – clear as mud also then?

    That’s your LAN & Norton sorted - now the mp3 thing, the main reason for mp3’s and mpg’s skipping during playback is a resource issue, basically the streams of data have a life span before they expire, so in the main this will happen if either the buffer is not full enough or cannot be populated quickly enough, so a recommendation:- either upgrade the system memory, reduce the processor loading by stopping unused processes, or simply go for a system that can process data more quickly. One other option as simple as it sounds but perhaps not an option you want to hear is go for a lower version of operating system which is much less resource hungry. This all depends on how much cash you want to invest or not.

    Hope all of this assists.
     
  7. Markybob

    Markybob New Member

    My word.... Truly appreciated piece of work that

    Made me smile about the 98 clients, (kids im affraid) lol

    Because of problems encountered in the past I actually went out and bought this version of Norton, (2004 Internet Security) includes 5 programs including parental control!!

    Is there no way of fixing it?

    I am running 2k on this machine, is the move to XP a warranted one? I don't know too much about it.

    The network is sorted now, everybody see's everybody (I do have a hub, also using a jetdirect networked printer) but I do need to do the Norton switchy thing.

    This machine has been down for a while, but has just been upgraded. New ASUS m/board, Intel P4 2.8GHz and 512MB PC3200 mem. Surely this must be OK for the music, it was P4 2.0 before and that ran them OK.

    Loads of problems with Aria, there aftersales is rubbish, they still have a m/board chip and memory from another machine, mid March they were sent back, thats another story though.

    Thanks again for your help

    Mark
     
  8. Mr MAN

    Mr MAN New Member

    Marky,

    Another essay – apologies but again I hope some of this will assist:-

    I see the problem with NIS then - if you have a specific requirement like the parental control which is quite good then by all means use it (whatever you prefer) just make sure you unblock the correct range of ipaddresses as I listed earlier and it should work ok, If I remember correctly on the install it detects a home network with the ip address range I've given you and automatically unblocks them for you, if not then it will be in the help somewhere (F1) - still stuck let me know and I'll install it on one of my systems and let you know.

    XP also is not essential but for home networking it's a bit easier as there is a wizard to do all of the work for you - again whatever you are most comfortable with.

    As for the Win2k performance thing - perhaps you've a service with a fault or something similar which is hogging the processor - basically load task manager (right click on the taskbar and it's on the menu) and see if any processes are taking a large cut of the processor time. A process for instance that is renound for hogging process if it fails to run properly is a virus checker (an example - not to say yours is at fault). Typically the idle process should hover well above 95% if you are doing nothing on your system.
    If there is a process like this then uninstall the owning application and re-install it again, hopefully it will go away – also try any available updates for the app.

    Just in case - get a copy of stinger and run it through your system just to make sure there is not a virus that Norton has not picked up. Some times virus checkers don’t check themselves or some running services properly and report no virus when in fact there could be one. Stinger is available from http://vil.nai.com/vil/stinger - note it’s regularly updated so just re-download it each time you want it. Have a read of the webpage and it tells you all about it. Stinger does not check for all viruses but does do a very good of hitting the most common and destructive ones for you.

    If nothing from the above is apparent then the best way to do this is the manual way in the following steps:

    1) Re-install any Win2k drivers that are required for your system - then re-service pack the system with sp4 - and perform tests – if the problem goes away then skip (2). Note – always service pack last, there are occasions that if you service pack first and then install after a driver afterwards then you’ll just have to do it again anyway.

    2) Basically disable all of the non-native NT services, remove all items from the start group, backup registry key HKEY<u>LOCAL</u>MACHINE\software\microsoft\windows\current version\run, remove any entries that are your apps. Now re-start your system and run tests:
    a) If it works ok then - bring the services online one at a time followed by the registry key run entries and then the startup group and keep testing until you find the faulty app - then remove and re-install.
    b) If it still has the problem - stop wasting time and re-build the O/S from scratch, sometimes although this is &#147;a pain in the butt&#148; it&#146;s simply quicker to start again rather than track down the fault. A system rebuild + application installs depending on your experience and the quantity involved can take between 2hrs and let&#146;s say 30, so, if the rebuild is quicker then take that option.

    An important note
    =================
    Before this work &#150; especially if you start to disable services BACKUP YOUR DATA FIRST &#150; also do not stop services that are essential for your system or you might never get into it again


    As my final comment then &#150; don&#146;t know if you want to do this or perhaps have a preference either way but why not go to Windows XP on all of your systems? This of course depends on if all of the systems are compatible, cash etc&#133;. etc&#133;.
    Also &#150; just for the kids, I&#146;ve installed google&#146;s toolbar and also the msn toolbar onto the machine my kids use and these working together do block most of those annoying unwanted popups (especially the graphic ones I don&#146;t want my 7 year old one to see). I&#146;ve had these on for some time now and I&#146;ve not seen a popup recently that I would be overly concerned about so it might be worth a try.

    Happy computing&#133;&#133;&#133;.
     
  9. Markybob

    Markybob New Member

    Mr Man

    Since you have now been qualified for the maintenance of my PC!!

    Since the flattening/re-installation of 2k apart from a few niggles which you have gone a long way in answering (thank you) NERO does not seem to recognize the re-writer, I thought it was the software so loaded the Easy CD creator that came with the package originally, this also didn't see the drive, it all seems configured OK, i.e, the correct drive symbol and when windows is loading the descriptive text reads correct.

    Any ideas come to mind?

    Cheers

    Mark
     
  10. Mr MAN

    Mr MAN New Member

    Glad to be of some use and thanks for my recent qualification!!

    Nero - sounds like the problem is not that or Easy CD if they both don't work, best suggestion is update the driver and use the genuine driver supplied to you when you bought it:

    1) Find the driver CD that came with the drive
    2) In device manager - find your drive right click it and go to properties
    3) Go to the driver tab
    4) Click the update drive button and a wizard will start in Win2k
    5) Select "Display a list of known drivers......."
    6) Click have disk and locate the folder on the CD that contains the correct 2k driver.

    .....) You seem quite able to me and probably know the rest so I wont teach you to suck eggs.

    Hopefully what's happened here is that Win2k has put on a generic atapi driver (assuming an IDE drive) or such like and it's just simply that the generic driver will only support reading from the drive where as your specific drivers on the Driver CD will enable the full functionality (in this case it will therefore be seen as a writer). The text can show correctly even if the driver is incorrect on occasions.

    Let me know how it goes and if this does not work then I think of a work arround for you.

    By the way - does this post mean that your mp3's are now playing ok?

    Cheers mate.
     
  11. Markybob

    Markybob New Member

    The CD-RW driver is a windows one, can't find my driver so am presently searching the net for one, not much luck yet, have transferred all MP3's to this pc, they were upstairs, thought they might be skipping due to network speed (although they didn't before) have also increased virtual memory, don't know why just thought it a good idea. Still flaming skips!! processor useage is minimal and nothing draining resources.

    can't understand it, I really hate computers

    Help.. please
     
  12. Markybob

    Markybob New Member

    Superb, downloaded an update to Nero, hey presto.... sorted, don't think it was the driver after all, just not supported by my old version.

    Back onto the skipping playback now :(
     
  13. Mr MAN

    Mr MAN New Member

    Back again for more punishment then,

    Keep looking for the driver - perhaps windows update might have it or drivers.com, also the easy cd updates available on on the roxio web site might do the trick - just install the latest cd drive support pack and see if that helps.

    Now this mp3 thing again:
    You've already re-installed Win2k so it's unlikely to be software then (I make the assumption you did a good test with clean Win2k that was service packed etc before installing any of your applications) and the problem was still there.

    Assuming you are using ms media player 9 go to the tools/options menu and select the performance tab.
    In there you'll find a setting that defaults the buffering of playback data, by default this is 5 seconds so you could increase it. Personally I think that if this works then it will just mask a problem that will be back to haunt you in the furure (more than likely when you come to write a cd and you're getting buffer underruns you can't understand) but it's your choice.

    Assuming the above is set to default (5 secs) and you still cannot play them from your local disk then the next place I would be looking is at system hardware.
    2 things then I would look for:-

    Firstly you've changed your mother board so is the memory you've transferred from the old to the new actually campatable. Back to the manuals etc I'm afraid. Also check the specs - you might be required to have matched pairs of memory sticks and if you have not then this could be a problem.

    Secondly perhaps a memory chip failure - I saw a pc recently that did more or less what you describe where it ran unpredictably for a while and then on occasion for no real reason crashed with one of those lovely blue screen that it bods love so much!! The fault I found after some time was a failing 128mb memory DIMM that even the manufacturers diagnostics did not detect. To find it was a simple case of take out 1 chip at a time and see if the problem goes away, this is a bit time consuming as you'll see when you do it because you'll probably have to test for some time to make sure the problem has actually gone.

    As for the virtual memory (otherwise known as a swap file), this is used basically for the system to throw pages of recently unused memory allocation out to disk storage so that your faster system ram can be used much more efficiently. The data is paged in and out as required by the system and the actuall writing it'sself it done at very low level via the Windows Kernel, I won't go into more detail as I could be here all night!!! Basically stick with the recommendations from Windows and you can't go far wrong, but, with one exception and that's if you have a second drive in your PC (Note - drive and not partition). If you do have a second drive then put it onto your secondary IDE channel (or SCSI if you have that), install Windows onto C: drive and put the swap file onto the second drive (D: or whatever you choose to call it), believe it or not this will improve system performance.

    Enjoy........
     
  14. Mr MAN

    Mr MAN New Member

    just noticed your post mate - there you go additional drive support pack then, good news.
     
  15. Markybob

    Markybob New Member

    It's funny, I know your right but god I hope your wrong.

    Early March this system (which was built to my spec from Aria) crashed fatally, could not start it, got to the network connections then failed, when booted to the BIOS page I had all sorts of error messages. Just over a year old!! Phoned Aria and they suggested that the Motherboard had probably failed. So, ordered new one, tried to get like for like ended up with an Asus P4PE S-ATA RAID, the old one was a P4PE, thought I'd upgrade at the same time and ordered a Intel P4 Prescott 2,8GHz chip. Came the next day and I fitted it. BIOS beeped like billio (whatever that is!) phoned Aria, they suggested that the chip maybe U/S, said it will be 7/10 day to get the prescott back and check it etc. etc. So I got another, blow the expense it's my work!! it didn't work, phoned Aria, suggested memory fault or incompatability, so I bought some more!!, didn't work (sorry but trying to keep it short), so, I tried it all on the new motherboard and presto, it worked, sent back the other chip, new board and original memory to aria for them to check, phisically and compatability, in the meantime I got the system back up and running, fresh install etc (I'm a chippie now but was a Project Manager/design engineer in pharmaceuticals/nuclear industry, own company for 23 years sold it, now do chippying, long story but I still do the occasional design/build project), so I need it.... this system seemed (till you pointed out that it's not 100% compatible) to work OK, Aria came back and have identified the new M/board as the wobbly domino.

    So am I right in thinking that the new memory and chip on this old M/board is probably not quite firing on all cylinders????

    Sorry about the essay, but considering the amount of time you have given to my problem, this insight has probably confirmed your last post

    Has it not?

    How do I find compatability between these products godammit

    nite nite Mr (you are the) MAN
     
  16. Al-Yeti

    Al-Yeti New Member

    If you knew as much as you can type you would know why i made that suggestion, anyhow good points shame about your arrogance Tonk!

    Better reply from Marky he knew what i meant and why :)
     
  17. Mr MAN

    Mr MAN New Member

    Hey - Al, you tried and also did Tonk so no need to kickoff with the lad, we can't all know everything afterall - we post to help don't we and we don't wanna upset someone now who might help us out in the future (he did have a valid point however much it may have upset you).


    Anyway - back to marky's problem then:

    Sounds like you're having a nightmare with this lot, but, basically I've been through the steps I would take with any pc to attempt to rule out software before hardware as that's easier to fix when you don't have to deal with suppliers etc.

    Obviously I can't give the definitive answer here for you as each problem on a computer can vary due to hardware, software etc.... you know the score but it's interesting what you say and I think you've got a duffer along the lines somewhere.

    Mother board spec is here http://www.ukcomputerparts.com/en-gb/dept111.html
    or better
    http://uk.asus.com/ - check under products and you'll find it there.

    Can I make a recomendation as this point for anyone who may also be reading - unless you are really confident with debugging, testing etc to find these problems, always buy your kit form a local supplier face-2-face and not mail order (use recommended ones first as most good computer bods don't even advertise). This way, if you should get this kind of problem then you drop it with them and say "fix it or replace it". Even the likes of PC world will fix it and only charge you if the component at fault is not the one they supplied you (mind you you've got to be a bit pushy with those guys sometimes, depends who you talk to). Yes I know this can be more expensive but sometimes time and cost effective.

    However to check the hardware - (perhaps they gave you a book the motherboard), but, you require ECC DDR SDRAM memory as far as I see.

    You must check this out as there might be something of use there based on the processor you have etc:-
    http://www.asus.com.tw/support/english/techref/fsb800/index.aspx

    So, Look at the spec of memory to use, if your's is different then you need to sort that out. If however your is an exact match the check out the link above where there is a memory manufacturer compatability list that might assist you.

    By the sounds of it then yes - I think your summation of not all 4 cylinders is a good description and therefore worth the investigation.

    Currently feeling sorry for you,

    Mr MAN................
     
  18. Markybob

    Markybob New Member

    This is quality help mate.....

    Looks like this m/b (P4PE) needs a bios update to come with the cpu, the memory is the PC3200 (DDR400) which matches the 800-MHz chip, the compat. chart lists the manufacturers which I don't have at hand, will this matter?

    Cant understand why Aria found upon incompatability with the new P4PE S-ATA raid, 2,8GHz CPU and memory as above because they all seem to match OK

    worms and bags come to mind

    How I wish I'd bought a new PC

    Thans again, me thinks very close now. Have to read the procedure on bios update before going ahead. to late and too tired now

    Cheers

    Mark
     
  19. Mr MAN

    Mr MAN New Member

    Marky,

    Best of luck for the update then and let me know how it goes, just incase you blow it away - back up any changed data you have!!!!

    Mr Man will be bak l8er!!!!!
     
  20. Al-Yeti

    Al-Yeti New Member

    lol not upset :) he still a fool!
     

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