[limeman]

Thank you in advance

I just bought a windows xp home machine and I'm trying to connect to a network running on a Win 2000 machine. There are 3 pc's running win 98 on this network, and 1 other pc running xp home. They all work perfectly. When I did my initial setup, all was well. I could access the internet and I mapped to the network drive (d:) and was able to access all the network files.

The problem shows up first thing in the morning when I boot my machine. I have two programs that require the network to start. The first is a calendar program that we all run. It should start automatically. Mine starts, but says that it can't find the network file. The other program does not start automatically (which it shouldn't) but the icon changes to something generic and takes an extra 30 seconds to start initally, like it is looking for the network. Once the machine is fully booted, I can go to file, open on the calendar software and it will work just fine.

Why do the other 98 machines and other xp home machine work just fine, but mine doesn't see the network right away?

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it sounds as if your network card isn't loading up on boot...i have this problem sometimes here at work...and i haven't really been able to find a sure fire sollution...but what i generally have to do is enable "wake on lan" or something to that effect in the bios...ths setting basically makes it to where when you turn the pc off...the NIC card stays active

[dsenette]

it sounds as if your network card isn't loading up on boot...i have this problem sometimes here at work...and i haven't really been able to find a sure fire sollution...but what i generally have to do is enable "wake on lan" or something to that effect in the bios...ths setting basically makes it to where when you turn the pc off...the NIC card stays active

[limeman]

The wakeonlan was enabled, but the "allow the computer to turn off this device" under power managment was enabled. I disabled it.

Sorry if I'm getting off subject, but how would you define the network. My boss is always touting how great his network is and he tells everyone that the server is running all our apps. But that is not true.

The windows 98 machines have a login screen that require a password. After boot, you now have access to the server and internet. You can log in from someone elses PC, but you do not get any of your own files or settings. The 2000 server has all the employees in active directory. But, if I am able to access all the files on the server and the internet from my XP home machine simply by clicking on the "map network drive" button, then this cannot be a real domain, right? After all, win 98 and XP home cannot be on a domain, right? Therefore, isn't this really just a standard file server? How would you define it?

[dsenette]

right....98 and xp home cannot be on the domain...so his network...isn't much of a domain style network...if there's one server that has active directory on it (why the heck you'd need one machine in an active directory domain with no compatable workstations...i don't know)...and all the rest of the machines do not have the ability to join the ad domain...then yeah...you've basically got a file server...

[limeman]

Is there anyway to "login in" to the server on startup? - I was using an integrated network card, now I switched to a PCI device and it is still not working. The funny thing is, immediately after the pc shows the windows desktop on bootup, even while it is still loading apps and services, I can open My Computer and open the network drive and see/open/read any file on the network, no hesitation. But if I let the computer fully boot and wait 2 minutes, then try to open the calendar program I still get an error message that it can not open the network file. I close the calendar and reopen and the file is there. It must give me an error first before it works. The same goes for the other file connected to the network.

Back to my question - is there anyway to tell XP home to login into the 2000 server on startup. I have created the user in Active Directory and the very first time I used the home machine to access the server I had to use the user name and password created. Now it no longer requires a login. But I'd like to force the computer to login. Is that possible.

[limeman]

Sorry for the type-O on (login-in). That must be the opposite to logout out.

[dsenette]

no...because home cannot join a domain (which would mean that you would be logging in as the domain user...therby negating the need for that password when you go to open a file)...with both 98 and xp home...you kind of have to enter that password for each network resource every time you log on (usually ever time you log on..sometimes you can retain access as long as you don't restart or turn off the machine...but not always)...