Weird PING Problem

I have a SOHO network with 2 WIN 2k, 4 WIN 98 and print server running DHCP to assign the addresses (192.168.1.2 to 192.168.1.10 with the print server manually assigned ...100). all the machines can share files and access the internet. All but one of the machines can PING the others. The 'Problem Machine' can ping all the other machines but None of them can PING it. There is no other problem with this WIN 2K machine. It shares and access the other machines, it connects and uses the internet flawlessly. It is just not showing up on the network map (it uses PING). All the parameters I can think of to check have been verified.

It is a mystery that I wold like to solve if for no other reason than to extend my knowledge of how networks handle these things.

Any help would be appreciated, thanks.

Jeff fHobson

 

I'd bet on the problem PC having a firewall running that is blocking things.

 

I checked to see if it was firewalled. I have none. I do have only one network card on the m/b but in SOME places, it also shows a 3-com board(connection) with the same IP address (...3) I have looked all over the board and the outside connections and I cannot find the 2nd network connection. BTW, this is a 'frankenstein' machine that I built from scratch. I have a suspision that the 2nd 'connection' is the basis of the problem, I cannot find where it is though.

Thank you for the lead on the firewall, I got a grin from your sig line.

 

Does the phantom card show up in Device Manager? If so, when logged on with an admin account, can you remove it?

If it shows up in your Network Settings, can you disable it?

I do agree that having the PC think it has 2 NICs and the same IP for both would cause issues.

And glad you like the sig. I read that some where and just decided to steal it 'cause I got a chuckle from it too.

 

The second card does NOT show up in either the device mangler or the network settings. When I run SANDRA on the network, it shows all the network connections, bluetooth, LPT, COM and local network. In that screen, the second network connection shows up. I checked the motherboard docs to make sure that there was not an on-board NIC and none is mentioned (and of course there is no extra network connection). I set up another machine to continuously ping this machine. I then re-booted. It was timing out until the message "setting up network connections" appeared. It responded for 5 pings and then started timing out again. It indicates that there is something starting either within network connections or just after that is locking the ping out. What is the sequence of events at that time? Is there a Doc page that outlines the boot sequence and system activity when dragging WIN 2K out of the muck?? All of the 'optional' startup programs have been eliminated as a possibility. This problem persists with a bare-bones system.

 

Jeff - thanks for the information. Stranger and stranger.

I've emailed tech support at SiSoft to (hopefully) find exactly where SANDRA is seeing the phantom NIC. Registry maybe but they can give more precise information.

If you know where, you can probably make it go away and the ping issue with it.

Nice job on finding out about the short period when ping packets could get to the PC. It makes me think of another possible diagnostic measure you could try. Harmless and maybe useful.

Add a line to the boot.ini file for a safe mode startup with details and a log file of start-up activity. You may see exactly what is happening and maybe even a pointer to the phantom NIC load.

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS= "Safe Mode" /fastdetect /safeboot /sos /bootlog

should do the job. The drive and partition may not match your system so compare the multi(n)disk(n)rdisk(n).... to the existing entry and make the numbers match.