[topcat098]

I'm hoping someone can help me.
I've had a small home network for some years. I have 2 main desktop computers. One runs XP Home, and is set up as the gateway for a ICS using a broadband modem and is configured using the XP wizard. The other runs Windows 2000 professional. I also have a laptop (Windows XP) which I connect when necessary. There are no wireless connections. The W2000 machine is connected to my router via a co-ax cable, the two XP machine via standard connectors. This has been in operation for some time and there have been no hardware changes since it was working fine. For the last few weeks I have had no connectivity at all. The machines are unable to even ping each other, and obviously the laptop and W2000 machine are unable to obtain their IP addresses from the server.
I have ZoneAlarm firewall and Norton Antivirus on the server machine (xp firewall off) but I have tried closing these and it makes no difference.
The cables are all attached securely. The whole system has been powered off many times in the period of problems.
Can anyone suggest where I might start to look?

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Try first swapping out the network card in the server that the machines are receiving their ip's from. So it sounds like you have a router running as a switch connected to server's 2nd nic and then the other pc's connect to the switch? Try removing the switch and connect one pc directly to the server's 2nd nic and see if maybe the switch is the problem.

-=jonnyrotten=-

[-=jonnyrotten=-]

Try first swapping out the network card in the server that the machines are receiving their ip's from. So it sounds like you have a router running as a switch connected to server's 2nd nic and then the other pc's connect to the switch? Try removing the switch and connect one pc directly to the server's 2nd nic and see if maybe the switch is the problem.

-=jonnyrotten=-

[dsenette]

if you're connecting directly to the server be sure to use a cross over cable.

[-=jonnyrotten=-]

if you're connecting directly to the server be sure to use a cross over cable.

Oops, should've mentioned that. Thanks dsenette.

-=jonnyrotten=-

[dsenette]

i spent 45 minutes to an hour cursing a cisco router before i remembered that the last time i needed to.