Problems setting up home network.

[Evil-Lab-Monkey]

I'm setting up a small network at home and I'm having problems.

I'm trying to hook up my 2 computer. One has Windows XP Pro and the other Windows 98 second edition. I just bought 2 network cards (Encore) and some CAT5 crossover cable. I've got the network card working just fine on the XP machine but I'm having problems on the Windows 98 comp

Its a Celeron 500 with 320 megs of RAM, a 56K Win Modem and has build in video and sound.

Here is what I've done so far to it:

Put in network card
- Booted Up
- It detected it and started to install
- It could not find files that it needed, I put in Win 98 CD but it still can't find them. I cancel installation.

Went to add new hardware.
- did autodetect
- It said it found a network card that was installed but not working properly.
- Tried to install using drivers on the disk i got. Couldn't find files on Win 98 CD. I searched my hard drive and found all but one in -C:/Windows and /Windows/System.

Restarted
- Got message while booting:
Could not find vnetsup.vxd, vredir.vxd and dfx.vxd
The registry or system.ini is pointing to these files but they cannot be found.
- Cotinues booting
- Gets to desktop and sais:
- Unable to load the dynamic link lirary: msnp32.dll
The system cannot find the device specified
Some or all of the following features are not available:
Microsoft Network.
Finishes booting.
- I turn it off.

Sounds like I'm missing some required components that I'll need to network but I can't install them because it never seems to be able to find them on the CD.

[HAL9000]

Remove the network adapter from the network properties and reboot the machine. When it locates the adapter, hit CANCEL and let the computer finish booting. Go to device manager and hit refresh to bring up the detection of the card again. When it comes across a file it cannot find, use the find command to locate the file on either the hard drive, Win98CD, or NIC driver diskette. I prefer to use DOS, so I would run the following command.

dir missingfile.xxx /s

Do that for your Windows directory, the D:\WIN98 directory on the CD-Rom and the A:\ drive for your NIC diskette.

When you find the file and what directory it's in, copy that path over to where it is required in the installation.

[Evil-Lab-Monkey]

Okay, I reinstalled the NIC but I still get the vxd and Microsoft Network errors on startup. I've searched on the Win 98 CD, the HDD and the disket and I dont have any of the vxds anywhere.

[HAL9000]

Knock everything out of your network properties... EVERYTHING, and reboot and set things up again.

[Evil-Lab-Monkey]

Okay, I removed them all and I only got 2 of the 3 vxds showing up and no Microsoft Network error. I've put the NIC back in, now what do I need to put back in the Network properties?

[AlwaysUp]

Just a thought....did you read the installation manual thoroughly? I know that my 3Com Nics required me to do a PreInstall of some files before I even inserted the NIC. Could this be your prob?

[Evil-Lab-Monkey]

After much frustration and setting up many a time I've managed to get everything working... almost. The only problem I still have is that when I try and access the Win XP machine from the Win 98 machine I get asked for a password. I tried the admin password for my XP machine but that isn't it. I've set the HDD to share. I just want to disable the password, how can I do this?

[glc]

You would have to enable the guest account on the XP box or add a user with the same login as the 98 box to get in without a password.

[Evil-Lab-Monkey]

The guest account was always enabled but didn't seem to work. I was logged in a 2 different users on each machine, that was the problem. Once I made a user called user1 and gave them admin properties on the XP machine, logged in as them on the 98, I was all set to go.

I want to enable file and printer sharing but that would be a security risk right? I'm running on a 56K line out in the country but I don't have a firewall or anything. If I share all my HDDs on both computers how risky is that?

[glc]

You can try installing NetBEUI and using that for file and print sharing - but I hear XP doesn't really play nice with it. IPX may be an option, it's routable but more secure than wide open TCP/IP. Another option is a 3Com 56k Lan Modem (3C886) - it's a little NAT router with a 56k modem in it, so it would be a basic firewall.