Jimbo said:
I will check some of the other things you mentioned, but I do know it is a
new CAT 5 cable with RJ-45 adapters that I installed. The reason I ran new
CAT 5 is because there was CAT 5e in place that didn't work. I didn't
realize until later that CAT 5e would allow for faster transmission.
I also know the XP firewall is disabled, but I do have Norton SystemWorks
installed. Perhaps it is causing a problem?
One other question... could slowing down the communication to the router
be causing the problem with printing? The thing is, I can't even ping the
print server. Then again, I'm not even sure I should be able to do that.
Thanks for the help and any additional help you can provide.
Your original post about having to slow down the transmission speed
on the network to get it to work, along with :
"but I do know it is a new CAT 5 cable with RJ-45 adapters that I installed.
The reason I ran new CAT 5 is because there was CAT 5e in place that didn't
work. "
is ringing *very loud* alarm bells.
I think Michael is exactly right about the cabling.
I think it's wired up wrongly.
If you ran your own cat5 cabling, you need to look carefully at
which cores you have used for which pin number.
It makes a huge difference.
The most common error is the correct twisted pairs are not being observed.
It's not enough just to connect 1-1, 2-2, 3-3 and 6-6.
You need to look at the twisted pairs inside the cable.
The most common error is to use use one pair for pins 1&2,
another pair for pins 3&4, another pair for pins 5&6, and a pair for 7&8.
The wires sit neatly inside the connectors if you do it this way.
Unfortunately, this will not work.
( Well, sometimes on a short run it will, but probably not at 100 )
pins 1&2 need to be from one twisted pair ( usually orange ).
pins 3&6 need to be from another twisted pair ( usually green ).
This causes the wires to cross over each other inside the plugs, and it
seems a bit ugly. But this is the ONLY way it will work. Look at the
pictures at the bottom of this page:
How to Wire a Network
http://www.linksys.com/faqs/default.asp?fqid=20
The only fix is to chop the ends and re-terminate them correctly.