need help adding XP box to 98 network

Sorry for the lengthy post but I wanted to provide as much info as I could on my current setup and what I have found so far by searching the board and the net.

I currently have a small home network, 5 PC’s all running W98 SE, 3 directly connected and 2 connected via a hub to a Linksys BEFSR41 router which is connected to a cable modem. My current setup works fine, all PCs can share files, printers, internet and talk to each other just fine. The router assigns IP addresses to all machines starting at 192.168.1.100. I’m not using ICS.

What I want to do is add a WinXP Pro (with SP1) box to the mix, directly connected to the router on my last available port. I want this machine to have a static IP address, probably 192.168.1.100, as I want to use it as a game server and will be doing port forwarding in the router and don’t want the address changing all the time. I also want this machine to be able to share files with the 98SE boxes and share my cable internet connection. I don’t really care about print sharing with this machine.

What I think I have to do, based on searching the board and some networking sites;

Make sure the XP box has a different computer name than any of the 98 machines.
Make sure the XP box has the same workgroup name.
Setup the router so that it doesn’t assign the IP address that I want to use for the XP box.
Assign the static IP address to the XP box.
Make sure the XP box has TCP/IP and Client for Microsoft Networks installed.

As this is my first venture into the world of XP, I’m not totally sure of where to go to set everything up. I’m not totally green to networking, but I’m no expert either. Could any of the network gurus here let me know if I’m on the right path with what I need to do to get this box working on the network, and the path to take in XP to do it?

I would appreciate any and all help.

 

Everything you listed plus some way for XP to know 'who' wants to share files. 9x is perfectly happy to password protect a share and let anyone who knows the password connect and work. XP won't play that way.

XP will only share its' contents with PCs where a user logged on with a username and non-blank password. For your situation, if that is done and the Guest account on XP is enabled, you will be good to go.

As to making sure the DHCP server piece on your Linksys doesn't try to assign the address you want the XP machine to use, easiest would be to give DHCP a limited scope of IP addresses it is allowed to use. Maybe 192.168.1.2 - 192.168.1.20 or something. Then the address you want to give the XP PC will be in the same network so they can talk but will be outside the range that DHCP will ever give out.

 

Newt,

Thanks for the reply. It sounds like I'm on the right path.

I have changed the router to start assigning addresses at 192.168.1.105 and that seems to be working just fine. I went into the tcp/ip properties on the XP box and assigned it a static address of 192.168.1.100 and a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0.

All of the 98 machines are logged into with a user name and password, is this what you meant in your reply, or do you mean a user logged on to the XP box with a user name and password?

I'm going to make sure the Guest acct. is enabled, I know where to go to do that.

I'm going to put the XP box on the network this evening and see what happens. I'll post back with the results.

 

As long as all the 9X machines require logon name/password, I don't see why the XP machine would need it. If you ever add a 2nd XP system (or NT4/2K/2003/whatever) then they would all need it.

Sounds like you have things under control. If you stick with the 255.255.255.0 subnet mask, then you have n.n.n.1 - n.n.n.254 to play with while keeping all the players on the same network.

 

Newt, thanks very much for the help. It looks like everything is working the way it should. This was much easier than I expected.

 

That is good to hear.