Simple 98SE LAN is not so simple

Hi All,
I have never been able to see what I want to in a simple 2 PC nic-cable-nic LAN.
(and that is after three years trying). I have two Athlon Thunderbirds that are on the LAN as A1 and A2. They both have the same version of Win98SE and the same Realtek Lan card. In fact, they are both identical apart from their printer models and that A1 has an HP CD burner.
I copy the root disk from A1 to A2 about twice a year and after making some adjustments on A2, they work fine.
I have, of course, to change the computer name on A2 back to A2 after such a reset - as otherwise it has A1 after the copy.

What I WANT to see when I open Network Neighbourhood on A1 is :

DTLAN (that is the Workgroup name - same on A1 and A2)
A2 (I can choose to look at A2, and click it to drill down to :
c on A2 (Those are the 2 disks share names)
d on A2

What I want to see when I open Network Neighbourhood on A2 is :

DTLAN (that is the Workgroup name - same on A1 and A2)
A1 (I can choose to look at A1, and click it to drill down to :
c on A1 (Those are the 2 disks share names)
d on A1
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
What I ACTUALLY see on both A1 AND A2 is ...

Network Neighbourhood
- Entire Network
- A1
- A2
- DTLAN
- A1
- A2
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Where does "Entire Network" come from ? It's not a Workgroup name I specify or need.
Why does A1 show itself when I work on A1 ? Not needed.
Why does A2 show itself when I work on A2 ? Not needed.

Any help to clean this up is much appreciated.
regards

 

Yes - you can always see yourself in Network Neighbourhood (unless you've not enabled file and print sharing - sometimes, depends on OS). However, it is useful to do so as first it can be a good initial test that your network settings are at least working locally, and second it allows you to be able to see how you might appear to others on the network. Also if you are developing a distributed application that uses data on your PC, you need to be able to access that data the same way (same path) as external systems would (\\mypc\myfolder rather than C:\myfolder).

Networking under Windows 98 isn't the most logical of experiences. My understanding is that the list of machines under "Entire Network" is everything the Win 98 machine finds easily (broadcasts to or has in WINS/LMHOST). I presume you get them there for conveniance!

To get what you want I would suggest you map the C and D folders and then create a folder on your desktop with contains only shortcuts to those mapped drive. Then to access the other machine, you double click on the folder and select the mapped drive you want rather than going to network neighbourhood.

 

I have to agree with ReggieB on this one. Even assuming you could get the Network Neighborhood display like you want it, it's simply not worth the effort.

His idea of creating persistant maps to shares is good.

If there is some reason you do not want such a mapping, then still lots quicker than opening NN and drilling down to a share then clicking it open is start~run~\\A1\Share1 from A2 and you get an explorer window opened to that share.

 

Thanks a lot for your help ! I am not sure about mapping - are changes to
the remote partition automatically shown in the local map ? Does mapping
use a lot of disk space ? Is it slow ? I need to research these questions.
I do have shortcuts a-la Newt's suggestion in a toolbar, and they work fine,
are quick and show what I want.
I was just puzzled that I couldn't set up NHood not to show the local
partitions on each PC. But as Newt says, it's not worth the time trying
Thanks again
David

 

Mapped drives use very little resources unless you have a folder (mapped "drive ") open and not very much even then.

You will notice a slight delay when you first boot up since your OS will re-establish the network connection before displaying the GUI but is should be well under a second with your setup.

Network Neighborhood (or Computers Near Me or My Network Places or whatever they call it on a particular OS) is a kludge. It relies on services that were essential to Microsoft networking in the 'olden days' but are less common now and certainly not needed for most of us today. You can have a perfectly functioning local network where NetHood simply doesn't work - such as the one I have at home. But I killed mine on purpose since the supporting stuff took resources I'd rather use elsewhere. I don't advise this unless you either know lots about networking already or have a strong desire to learn more by breaking stuff and figuring out how to fix it.

It might be worth using on a smallish network of 20 to 100 PCs but on a smaller network, you already know about all the shares you want to use and on a larger network, it's just too clunky and slow.

 

You should find that accessing a mapped drive is faster than accessing a folder via network neighbourhood. With a mapped drive the authentication is done on start up and is maintained as long as the PCs stay on. Therefore when you access a folder via a mapped drive you don't have to initiate a new authentication process.

If you access the file via network neighbourhood, you will have to authenticate each time. This results in significant delay at the start of each connection.

Even if you don't use passwords the system will authenticate by the way.