SBS 2003 help

I am a small business owner. A few years ago, I was forced to fire my on staff IT admin and I quickly became proficient at small business networking. I know an IT administrator who helps me on occasion, however, he is very sick and I need some help.

Here is my network description. I am running a server with SBS 2003 and I have another server backboned to it that runs specialized software for the industry I'm in. The main server runs all other functions. The main server has two nics, one for the network, and the other for the internet. I have three client machines on this network running xp pro sp2 and are fully updated.

Yesterday, two client machines lost all network connectivity and one other only has internet. They are all run off of the same switch. I put in another switch and it works, both nics work, however, when I try to remotely manage the clients from the server, it says the the network path cannot be found. I have no idea whats going on. Can anyone give me some advise?

Thanks for your help!

 

The first place I would have started was with the network hardware - but as you've replaced the switch, that should have dealt with that. There is a possibility that the cabling is a problem - but that's less likely to affect two PCs at the same time.

Are the two PC running XP. If so it might be worth removing the QoS packet scheduler. Have a look at this post:

http://www.windowsbbs.com/showthread.php?t=71521

This item will appear in the network connection properties on XP systems.

If that's not the fix, we need to start working on the basics. So first thing to do is see if you can ping the server from the PCs. (e.g PING 10.1.1.1). What response do you get?