Home Networking Problem

[W. J. Newton]

Hi,
I've been happily operating a simple, peer-to-peer home network (PNA-based)
for many months. I use W98/ICS and Zonealarm on the "host" machine. As
part of a modernization effort, I recently also installed XP Pro (w/SP1) on
its own drive in the "host" machine in a dual boot configuration to test
things out. When I boot into XP Pro on the host machine, the host accesses
the internet just fine and the local home network works fine (along with
everything else). So far, so good. However the two "client" machines on
the home network can't navigate the internet (page not found after IE 6
opens).

The cable modem/NIC is enabled and shared. The built in XP firewall is
disabled because I use Zonealarm. The IP address of the NIC adapter for the
home network is 192.168.0.1 and subnet mask is 255.255.255.0. Despite that,
the internet sharing on XP Pro isn't working. It doesn't matter whether I
use the wizard to configure the host and client machines for internet
sharing or I manually set the IP addresses for the home network host and
client machines. In fact, when I use the wizard on everything I usually
also lose the home network.

The W98/ICS configuration uses manually configured IP addresses for the host
and clients. It has worked great in running the home network and sharing
the internet connection since the first time I fired it up long ago.
However, I can't get the same setup to work using the XP Pro ICS.
ZoneAlarm is not relevant as the problem occurs even if Zonealarm is not
installed.

I have tweaked host and client IP, gateway and DNS settings for hours and
trudged up and down 2 flights of stairs while doing so, but this last bit of
networking functionality eludes me. I also carefully followed the setup
instructions for XP ICS found in one of several KB articles I referenced,
but I can't discover the source of this problem. In all other setup
functions I have found XP Pro to be great. That's why it bothers me that
ICS isn't working. This should be a no-brainer.

If i simply boot into W98/ICs on the host machine all is great, but when I
boot into XP Pro I run into the apparent ICS problem.

Could there be a "permissions" setting in XP Pro that affects Internet
access on the client machines in this kind of setup? Any other thoughts?
What have I possibly overlooked? It's bound to be something simple...

Thanks in advance...

--

 

[Squire]

Did you create the network floppy disk on the XP machine, and install it on
the 98 machines?

 

[Crafty]

Yes. One client machine is XP Pro and the other is 98SE. When I run the floppy on the client machines I often lose the home network and have to reconfigure manually. As I said, I've tried every installation approach identified in the knowledge base. Have been fooling with it more and still no joy when the host machine boots XP Pro. All is well when I boot to 98SE on the host. My last guess revolves around the cable modem/nic setup. Under SE the nic is identified as a SoHoWare 10/100 but XP id's it as a macronix adapter. I think this is right but at least its one different thing between the two OS's to investigate.

Thanks.

 

[W.J. Newton]

Update: I have determined that the client machines cannot see the ICS DNS
server. I know this because I can successfully PING to an IP address, but
cannot ping to a friendly name URL (like "yahoo.com"). Therefore I know
that the friendly name is not being resolved to an IP address. Don't know
what to do next. This only happens when the host is booted to XP PRO. Works
fine when the host is using 98SE...

Yes. One client machine is XP Pro and the other is 98SE. When I run the
floppy on the client machines I often lose the home network and have to
reconfigure manually. As I said, I've tried every installation approach
identified in the knowledge base. Have been fooling with it more and still
no joy when the host machine boots XP Pro. All is well when I boot to 98SE
on the host. My last guess revolves around the cable modem/nic setup. Under
SE the nic is identified as a SoHoWare 10/100 but XP id's it as a macronix
adapter. I think this is right but at least its one different thing between
the two OS's to investigate.

Thanks.