Hooking up two machines directly with network cable

[Doug]

Shouldn't be too hard, but I've been at it for a few hours now...

I have the proper crossover cable, and the status icons on both machines
show a connection. And each computer shows up in the other computer's
network places (several times in fact), and that's as far as I get. I have
folders set as shared, which I've accessed on other networks, but in this
setup, with the two machines linked directly, nothing happens. Depending on
which route I take, I get various messages, but all basically say "no" --
"the network path was not found," or some other error.

Perhaps the problem is that one machine is running xp, and the other win2k?
I ran the network setup wizard in the xp machine, and then tried to run the
setup on the win2k machine by running the xp installation disk (as per
instructions), but got an error message saying that this could only be done
on win98, me or xp machines.

On the win2k machine, there seem to be all sorts of options to connect via
phone, serial, or parallel cable, but none via lan cable.

I'm just trying to transfer files, nothing fancy...

Thanks in advance for any ideas. I'm going to bed ;-)
Doug

 

[Ron]

This one is a head-scratcher, but one thought comes up. First make sure that
each machine's network TCP/IP properties are set to 'Obtain an IP address
automatically'. Then double check the IP addresses on each by running
IPCONFIG from a command prompt. You should see addresses that start at
169.254.x.x which is the beginning of a block reserved for Automatic IP
Addressing (AIPA).

If IPCONFIG shows a subnet mask of 255.255.0.0 then any host numbers should
be ok (shown as .x.x in the example above). Of course each PC should have a
different IP address.

2nd quick thought. Check that each PC is in the same workgroup (Right click
on My Computer, Properties, Network ID tab.

-Ron
(email: replace 'abuse' with 'cyberguy3k')

 

[Doug]

Thanks Ron! I discovered the ng dedicated to win2k networks this morning,
and got some hints there (I'm not the first person to have this problem...).
I read there that each machine had to have the *same user* logged on
(amazingly), and so I set up a new user on one of the machines (thereby
losing all my desktop settings), and then it worked, kind of. I still
couldn't see the win2k machine on the xp machine, but the xp machine showed
up on the win2k network, and I was able to transfer my files.

In my experimenting I had enabled "NWLink IPX/SPX/Netbios" on both machines,
and for some strange reason this also seemed to be required, since disabling
it again left the computers unable to transfer files.

It's all Greek to me. I'll have to do some serious reading in the network
newsgroup to understand how all this works. Apparently computers can
identify themselves either by "name" or by IP address. I was using the name
method, but perhaps should have been using IP addresses.

Many thanks,
Doug

 

[John Wunderlich]

I have the proper crossover cable, and the status icons on both
machines show a connection. And each computer shows up in the
other computer's network places (several times in fact), and
that's as far as I get. I have folders set as shared, which I've
accessed on other networks, but in this setup, with the two
machines linked directly, nothing happens. Depending on which
route I take, I get various messages, but all basically say "no"
-- "the network path was not found," or some other error.

One more thing to try:
Go to either the Network Control Panel or the Device Manager on both
machines, find the NIC settings, and under Advanced settings manually
set the speed/duplex to 100/full or 10/full (both ends must agree).
Under cross-coupling conditions, the "Auto" setting does not always
work well.

HTH,
John