networking w/netbeui and xp

I received alot of help from Rancher (thanks to Unixfan, too) about setting up XP's with MS Mail. I don't want to bug Rancher again directly (but I hope he reads this!) here's my problem now:
I loaded the netbeui protocol on all the XP machines. They all share a common dial up access to the internet through the "server" machine.

The machines operate fine with MS Mail, but a couple of them won't access the internet or get internet mail---I keep getting a spooling error message when they try to check for internet mail. Of course I thought they were working fine when I left the office last night.
Thanks for any advice.
Ed

 

On the workstations that are not connecting to the internet, do they have TCP/IP installed? Without this you can't go anywhere in the internet.

 

Thanks I'll check that...they originally did, but maybe I disabled it somehow.

 

I've also seen that a particular protocol or service is installed but there just isn't a check mark next to it to enable it.

 

OK...3 of the 5 seem fine. TCP was checked on on all. I'm getting an error on one when I load Outlook that the profile name contains invalid characters.
The other issue is that no matter how hard I try I can't get one certain machine to communicate with one other machine. They communicate fine independent of each other but not to each other, although they're sharing an internet connection just fine. WAAAAHHH.
Thanks for any help.
Ed

 

heynow - let me make sure I got this right.

All PCs are running NetBeui.
All PCs are in the same workgroup.
All PCs have file and printer sharing enabled.
All PCs have at least one folder shared.

All PCs are running TCP/IP. Using DHCP? Using some internal address scheme?

You have checked the bindings on all the adapters to make sure they are bound to both protocols?

Also, have you considered simplifying your life by getting a router/switch of some sort to handle both your internal and external comms? If so, you could do away with NetBeui, let the router/switch do DHCP for you, have everybody able to hit the net at will, and some other nice things.

 

Well Newt, maybe you're on to something...everything is checked, on, loaded, etc. Since one or two occassionally "drop off" maybe I should rethink the router issue. Over my head, I imagine, but I'll research that.
Thanks for the input!
Ed

 

heynow - the small router/switches made by Linksys, Netgear, and several others are very forgiving and setup is pretty much automatic.

I run a 4port LinkSys at home and the setup instructions were very short. Basically I plugged all my devices into device ports, my DSL line into the proper port, and said for the router to do everything.

I set the NICs to get their information from the server.

When I fired up the router/switch, I had a network and all PCs could hit the net fine. They couldn't talk to each other though. Well DUH - I had a firewall running on each and the blasted things were doing exactly what they were supposed to do and blocking traffic. Disabled the local firewalls and all was well.

The router firewall gives great protection so I no longer felt a need to run local ones on each PC. I still could though by just changing their port settings to allow internal comms as needed.

 

I'm going to give all that a try on Wednesday...thanks again.

 

Were you able to fix?

I'm brand new to this BBS, I hope this isn't two elementary of an answer. Here's the MS doc on troubleshooting connections... If you have the internal firewall on each machine you may need to open 127.0.0.1

I found on a number of firewalls this removed the sharing problems

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q314067

 

thanks all

Thanks for the input everyone...these machines are at my wife's small office...I tried various suggestions with some success, but her boss has chosen to remove the Microsoft Mail function completely, so the "problem" is eliminated now. But I'm going to try and find them an alternative to the MSMail...any suggestions?

Thanks again.
Ed

 

How much money they willing to spend?

How fancy to they need to get?

Internal LAN only or out on the internet too?

 

They connect via modem through one machine. They really liked having MSMail. In terms of money...I have no idea...what options might be open to them?

 

Sorry heynow. Been off the bbs for a few days.

I can't tell from your response if they are looking for a mail program/system for an internal network?

Also, how many folks and what sort of network do they have.

 

Thanks Newt

Thanks for the follow up. Her boss is NUTS. One day he wants to unistall XP and the next keep it. It is definetly a work in progress. I'll keep asking ?? as I need to, but thanks for the input.
Ed