Inaccessible computer on mixed network

A strange problem!

A 3-computer Peer-to-Peer Simple Network using TCP/IP. No other protocols.

Two Windows 98SE machines (one [which I will call "3Com"] with a 3Com Etherlink for Complete PC Management NIC, one [which I will call "Netgear"] with a Netgear FA-310x NIC, one Windows XP Pro machine [which I will call "Linksys"] with a Linksys LNE100tx NIC. All NIC drivers up to date. A D-Link 8 port switch. A Linksys BEF SR11 Router connected to a cable modem. All computers are in the same Workgroup. All drives on all computers have sharing enabled with no passwords. All NICs configured to 100M full duplex.

"Linksys" can see and connect to "3Com" and "Netgear ".

"3Com" can see and connect to "Netgear" and "Linksys ".

"Netgear" can see and connetc to "Linksys" and CAN SEE BUT NOT CONNECT to "3Com ".

When an attempt is made to connect "Netgear" to "3Com" with either Network Neighborhood or Windows Explorer, the error message "The computer or sharename could not be found. Make sure you typed it correctly, and try again" pops up.

All computers can ping themselves and all other computers. All computers are being assigned IP addresses and subnet addresses by the router.

What can I do to fix this problem?

 

vidiat - first of all, welcome to the bbs.

This is at least the 2nd and maybe the 3rd/4th time this issue has appeared. Darned if I can remember right off what finally happened on the others. May have been before the bbs lost all it's older archives a while back because I can't search anything up so far.

Is your router's DHCP setting up DNS on the PCs?

Take a look in the hosts file on the affected PC (netgear) and see if you have a bad entry or two. If so, correct it.

If not probably the easiest thing to try next is to remove DUN from the affected PC (from safe mode is best), shut it down, remove the nic, boot up a couple of times without it, reinstall the NIC and DUN and see if you are cured.

Otherwise, if you prefer to try to track down the exact problem first:

Do you see what you should when you run net view from each of the 3 PCs?

If you are doing name resolution using NTB, try some of the nbtstat commands and again, are you seeing what you expect?

 

Just a followup to Newt's excellent advice:

As the machines are 98 then NetBIOS names are likely to be the problem - have a look at LMHOSTS in the Windows directory

If this isnt there then create it with entries for each PC (worth doing on each PC) as this will cut out broadcasts

 

sacreligious.....but hey why not

An easy solution in a network of that size would be to install netbuei. I Know it's chatty and the scourge of the devil but what's it gonna hurt with just 3 boxes?

 

I'm not ignoring (and truly appreciate) the responses to my post, but I've been helping a friend with a hard disk crash. I've got a few questions about the posted answers, but I'll get to them soon!

Thank you!