I am having problems setting up a home network consisting of two Windows Me machines and two Windows XP machines. One of the Windows Me machines is the server and has two network cards, one connected to a switch and the other to broadband. The Windows Me machines will network (share files, printers and the broadband internet connection within the workgroup) but not the XP PCs. I have manually specified the IP address of each PC. There are three possible problems: (1) Windows XP won’t communicate with Windows ME; (2) I’m using Ethernet cables instead of “crossover” cables (what’s the difference?); or (3) a firewall somewhere is preventing communication. I’m hesitant to change from Windows ME to XP because I hear that it can be quite involved. Please help! (more…)

My computer is connected to Transact. The box of my computer was too small for a standard network interface card (NIC) so the computer is connected using a USB 10/100 Fast Ethernet Adapter. Everything works well while I am downloading or in a MSN Messenger or NetMeeting session. However, when I have not accessed the internet for 30 seconds or so the connection may go to sleep for up to two minutes. I have turned off MSN Messenger and my firewall but this does not fix the problem. Other people with similar configurations, but using NICs rather than USB connections, tell me they do not have the problem. Therefore the USB connection is the likely suspect, particularly when other people tell me they have similar problems with other USB-connected devices. The computer is running Windows 98 SE. (more…)

Currently I have two computers, one running Windows 95 and the other running Windows 2000 Professional. Is there a simple way to transfer files (documents, not program files) from the Windows 95 computer to the Windows 2000 computer, apart from copying the files to disk? I have purchased a 2m serial laplink cable but am unsure how to use the cable. Can you help? (more…)

I use Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) for my home local area network. The main computer on the LAN is a Pentium III running Windows 98 SE. There are three other computers on the network, including an Acer Pentium 4, running Windows Me. Whenever the Acer Pentium 4 is turned on, it attempts to connect to the internet. The modem in the main computer starts dialling but of course it can’t connect as no username and password have been entered. I checked msconfig and there doesn’t appear to be anything in there out of the ordinary. Reformatting the computer with the Ghost image that Acer supply does not fix the problem either. Any ideas? (more…)

Recently, I established an ad-hoc wireless network between my desktop PC and my laptop, using the Microsoft home network and Internet Connection Sharing facility. Everything works well, except that I am only able to access a limited number of internet sites from the laptop. The Laptop is set up for the IP and DNS addresses to be allocated by the Desktop PC as host, and accesses the internet through the host’s TransAct broadband connection. Those internet sites that are accessible, which include the Microsoft sites, are found and displayed very quickly, but a large number of sites cannot be found. When they are called from the laptop, the desktop host sends and receives data to the ISP, presumably to the DNS server to obtain the sites IP address (I can see the data transfers from the network connections status pages on the host computer), but Internet Explorer on the laptop hangs up waiting for a ‘website found’ response, which never arrives. I thought of trying to connect to some of the websites that I cannot locate by using their numerical IP addresses directly from the laptop, thus avoiding the need to access DNS servers, but I do not know how to find the IP addresses. Internet Explorer 6 running on the desktop host works very well and quickly finds all websites. Do you have any ideas about how I should isolate this problem? Any assistance would be greatly appreciated. The desktop is running Windows XP Home and the laptop is running Windows 98 SE with Internet Explorer 6. (more…)