Sudden problem accessing LAN

[Martin S]

I have a small LAN with 4 PC's, 2 on XP and 2 with Win2K, hooked up
via a switch.

Until today, all worked perfectly. This past night we had a storm and
the circuit breaker was triggered. This morning, my PC could access
the other machines on the LAN via the shortcuts installed under
network favorites, but *not* via the complete network - if I click on
"Microsoft Windows Network", there is a looooong pause before I see
"Workgroup", the name of my network, appear, and then, if I click on
"Workgroup" (where normally I would see immediately the names of all
linked PC's), I have no access. I get an error message saying
"Workgroup is not accessible. You may not have necessary
authorizations..."

Also, although the web connection is still shared, there is no longer
access to shared printers.

Is it possible that the switch somehow got "shocked" - would this
produce the symptoms I'm seeing - that is, access to other PC's via
shortcuts only but not otherwise???

Help!!!???

 

[Chuck]

I have a small LAN with 4 PC's, 2 on XP and 2 with Win2K, hooked up
via a switch.

Until today, all worked perfectly. This past night we had a storm and
the circuit breaker was triggered. This morning, my PC could access
the other machines on the LAN via the shortcuts installed under
network favorites, but *not* via the complete network - if I click on
"Microsoft Windows Network", there is a looooong pause before I see
"Workgroup", the name of my network, appear, and then, if I click on
"Workgroup" (where normally I would see immediately the names of all
linked PC's), I have no access. I get an error message saying
"Workgroup is not accessible. You may not have necessary
authorizations..."

Also, although the web connection is still shared, there is no longer
access to shared printers.

Is it possible that the switch somehow got "shocked" - would this
produce the symptoms I'm seeing - that is, access to other PC's via
shortcuts only but not otherwise???

Help!!!???

Martin,

The Microsoft Browstat program will show us what browsers (I'm not talking about
Internet Explorer here) you have in your domain / workgroup, at any time.
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=188305

You can download Browstat from either:
<http://www.dynawell.com/reskit/microsoft/win2000/browstat.zip>
<http://rescomp.stanford.edu/staff/manual/rcc/tools/browstat.zip>

Browstat is very small (40K), and needs no install. Just unzip the downloaded
file, copy browstat.exe to any folder in the Path, and run it from a command
window, by "browstat status". Make sure all computers list the same master
browser.
For more information about the browser subsystem (very intricate), see:
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=188001
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=188305
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=231312
<http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/winntas/deploy/prodspecs/ntbrowse.mspx>
<http://www.microsoft.com/technet/archive/win95/w95brows.mspx>

--
Cheers,
Chuck
Paranoia comes from experience - and is not necessarily a bad thing.
My email is AT DOT
actual address pchuck sonic net.