Need help getting ICS working on home network.

[skay]

Thanks to any and all that offer some help to me here!!

I am an experienced software developer with some decent experience in
networking over my 20+ years of experience. And I have set up networks
with both Windows, Unix, etc. both at work and home before.

Right now I'm about ready to put a bullet in my head !@#$% I have
spent tons of hours trying to get this stupid little ICS network going
again on my home system. The situation is that I have ICS configured on
my server machine w/ a USB Satellite conneciton to the internet and a
10/100/1000 Base-T ethenet to the local network machines via a D-Link
DI-524 4-port wireless hub. The thing is that access to the outside
world actually works from the client machines - albeit at a snails
pace. But I can ping, ftp and even get the browser to display
small/simple web pages but sloooooowly.
Now I have been through lots of documentation and scavenging netnews,
web forums, etc. for information on troubleshooting ICS networking
issues with WInXP but so far no luck, and not enough troubleshooting
advice to move me much further than I have gotten by myself. So far, I
know that the clients get an address from the DHCP server, the internet
connection and LAN connection appear to be configured properly with
File and Printer sharing protocols present, and the Windows firewall
disabled on both (using Sygate Personal FW Pro for the external FW -
and run any tests with questionable interactions with the FW disabled -
at least during the testing that is ;-)

Now I have to say that before I attempted to get the network running
with my new WinXP server machine hosting the Satellite USB connection,
I temporarily used an old work laptop running Win2K that had been setup
as part of an NT domain, since it was a machine from the office. It
worked fine, except for the fact that the USB data rate was not all
that fast, much slower than my now deceased Dual Athlon MP server -
thus the reason for replacement w/ a Core2Duo machine ruinning WinXP
Pro. Now maybe I am missing something but simply configuring the WinXP
ICS and disabling the Win firewall (again I have Sygate for the
outside) and running the network setup wizard on the client boxes
doesn't allow me to share files/printers, etc. and I can't locate the
other machine in the network neighborhood, though they are "there" with
valid working IP addresses and can be ping'ed by name from the server
to client and vice versa. So what the f!@$ am I missing, I checked the
connections to make sure file/printer sharing was there, checked that
the Wins config in the Advance TCP/IP protocol configuration; it has
the NetBIOS "Enable NetBIOS over TCP/IP" checked. Still not working for
crap.... And to be on the safe side I unchecked the AEGIS protocol, and
the QoS Scheduling crapola so I didn't have to worry about that being
involved. I still can't get the machines to see each other and what
connectivity I do have is frightfully sloooooow.

My head is pounding from trying to fix this - please one of you MS MVP
networking guys set me straight here. I am just amazed that I could
have spent this much time trying to reconfigure something that worked
perfectly well a few months back and I have run into a stone wall in
terms of getting this little home network up and running again!

Thanks,
Scott

 

[skay]

I will try a test disabling ICS and setting the clients with static
IP's.
That shold allow me to confirm good h/w on the Lan side of things
and eliminate any questions of firewall config problems (leave it all
off)
or anything of that nature. Still don't see any configuration problems
here at this point, nothing that should prevent the machines from
seeing each other on the Lan. When I do attempt to open the
workgroup (mshome) under "Microsoft Windows Network" under
"entire network" the client machine comes back after about 4-5 minutes
and displays dialog with "Mshome is not accessible. You might not have
permission to
use this network resource. Contact the administrator of this server to
find out if you
have access permisions. The specified network name is no longer
available"

On the ICS server machine, doing the same operation returns immediately
with only the local machine
And I have confirmed that the TCP/IP LM host NetBIOS helper is running
on
both machines...

This just so aggravating, there doesn't seem to be any way to

 

[skay]

OK,

Got some good info from the event log on the server machine:


Date: 11/21/2006 Source: AtcL001
Time: 12:23:28AM Category: None
Type: Error Event ID: 194
User: N/A
Computer: Server
Description:
The description for Event ID ( 194 ) in Source ( AtcL001 ) cannot be
found. The local computer may not have the necessary registry
information or message DLL files to display messages from a remote
computer. You may be able to use the /AUXSOURCE= flag to retrieve this
description; see Help and Support for details. The following
information is part of the event: ,
\DEVICE\{172C5FE1-6AEF-4983-9BE9-F64EEC664F64}.

Maybe someone can lend a hand with this information and give me some
direction
as to how I should proceed from here.

 

[skay]

When I searched the registry I find the Event ID listed above w/ the
following info:

HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\{172C5FE1-6AEF-4983-9BE9-F64EEC664F64}
+ Parameters
|
TCPIP
(Defualt) REG_SZ
(value not set)
DefaultGateway REG_MULTI_SZ
DhcpIPAddress REG_SZ
DhcpServer REG_SZ
0.0.0.0
DhcpSubnetMask REG_SZ 255.0.0.0
EnableDHCP REG_DWORD 0x00000000
(0)
IPAddress REG_MULTI_SZ
192.168.0.1
Lease REG_DWORD
0x00000e10 (3600)
LeaseObtainedTime REG_DWORD 0x3ddc4082
(1037844610)
LeaseTerminatesTime REG_DWORD 0x3ddc4e92
(1037848210
SubnetMask REG_MULTI_SZ
255.255.255.0
T1 REG_DWORD
0x3ddc478a (1037846410)
T2 REG_DWORD
0x3ddc4cd0 (1037847760)

Now I also noticed the time was messed up on my machine when I found
the
first error in the event log. The year was incorrect. My machine
crashed when
I was configuring some stuff and I used the automatic "detault BIOS
reset" feature
and must have miss entered the year or exited without a save or
something. Anyway
I'm wondering if the DHCP leases are screwed up now and I need to
"purge" the
DHCP leases in the registry to start clean? Any suggestions?

 

[skay]

Found when I move the event aside in the registry (not sure if it would
be disastrous)
it didn't exactly fix the problem but I could finally "see" the client
system under the
server's Net Neighborhood -> Workgroup
Still digging for more info if anyone has any insights to share??

 

[skay]

Found this in another post:
If that doesn't work for you, here is an excellent network
troubleshooter by MVP Hans-Georg Michna. Take the time to go through it

and it will usually pinpoint the problem area(s) -
http://winhlp.com/wxnet.htm
* Hopefully this may provide some better insight into possible fixes*

 

[skay]

Well,

After pulling my hair out for a while longer I decided to try a PCI
ethernet
10/100 NIC I had lying around. Works fine with no problems at all.
Should have
been more suspicious of a hardware problems earlier but the basic
low-level
connectivity and fact that the hardware diagnostics worked through me
curve.
Next time I won't be so quick to discount a hardware issue!