Networking my old laptop


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I found my old laptop the other day... had problems starting up, but I've fixed it now. I now want to hook it up to my home network.

Problem: There seem to be no options to map network drives and Network Neighborhood is not shown on the desktop.

I'm running on Windows 98, and I'm using a "3Com Combo Cable"; one end attached to a PCMCIA card in the laptop, the other attached to an ethernet cable which is hooked up to my network hub.

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Win 98 wasn't really designed to do networking too well.

You should be able to share out your drives.....with mapping I think that you might have to run some kind of script.

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FIRST and foremost...is the network card loading properly?...any error showen via device manger?...if all is well with NIC's driver loading...then..

Do you have the ip protocol started?...is there anything related to TCP/IP when you check the properties of Net Neigh?

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It's running on Windows 98 SE. I'm trying connect it to a network that consists of a Windows XP Home PC, a Windows 98 SE PC and a wireless Windows XP Pro laptop, all conected to a network hub.

I managed to install drivers for the PCMCIA card and I managed to set it up so that Network Neighborhood is shown on the desktop. The option to map network drives exists now, as well.

Still have a problem though: I can't get on the network. Nothing is shown in Network Neighborhood except for Entire Network. When I double-click that, it says it can't get on the network; have a look at the Windows Help. So I went through all the troubleshooters; none of them helped.

The driver for the PCMCIA card were found on my Windows CD; would I need to download some one from the 3Com website?

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kewl...so the network card is working fine...now check the second part as I wrote above about the ip protocol...then check to see if you get an ip...winipcfg...then try and ping another ip on your network to confirm connectivity...you can only map drives to shares that YOU setup...there are some shares setup automatically...but you won't find them via the map drive option in explorer....or through Net Neigh as you tried...

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I had already given the laptop an IP address. I try pinging another computer on the network.

Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 0, Lost = 4 (100% loss)

Start > Control Panel > Network.

The following components are installed:

Client for Microsoft Network

3Com EtherLink III PCMCIA

Dial-Up Adapter

TCP/IP -> 3Com EtherLink III PCMCIA

TCP/IP -> Dial-Up Adapter

File and printer sharing for Microsoft Networks.

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if you're connecting through a "HUB" as you say...then where are the ip's being assigned from?...if you have your modem simply plugged into a port of a HUB along with all your pc's...and NO FORM OF NATTING...then only ONE machine will get an ip...there won't be any other ip to ping to in the first place...do you understand any of what I just posted?....sorry, just wanna see where your level of understanding lies...its nothing negative...we all started somewhere....

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It shouldn't matter whether or not I have a modem, as I just want to access files on the network.

For your information, the modem is in the Windows XP Home PC, which is using Windows XP's firewall.

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It shouldn't matter whether or not I have a modem, as I just want to access files on the network.

For your information, the modem is in the Windows XP Home PC, which is using Windows XP's firewall.

actually the structure of your network is crucial to understanding and solving this problem.

For example, if you have a modem and you had your windows xp machine connected to that and then plopped your hub in to connect your desktop and laptop together, that would not work, as your laptop would not be able to 'see' it, since they would be under different subnet masks. If you have a router with DHPC enabled and a cable or dsl modem in front of that then we would probably be good to go.

So I suggest you explain to us what exactly you network is composed of. If you are unsure of the functionality level of a device (whether it is a hub, switch or router for example) give us make and model numbers.

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have you tried creating a network setup disk on the xp machine and running it on the 98 one?

No. How do I go about doing that?

Here is my network:

network.gif

The Windows 98SE laptop is now on the network, but it does not have access to the Internet. I couldn't access the Internet settings on it because Internet Explorer seemed to be "locked" by my Dad's work (that's where he got the laptop from). So I used 98lite to uninstall Internet Explorer, then I ran the IE6 installation program off the network. However, it needed access to the Internet, so I installed the broadband modem into the laptop. Downloaded IE6, installed it, and now the Internet options are available.

Popped the modem back into the WinXP PC. Connected. All the computers on the network had acces to the Internet except the Windows 98SE laptop,

Do I need to run an ICS wizard on it? :unsure:

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