13-10-2012, 07:26 PM
If you're using Microsoft networking, which I'm sure you are, you need the following:
1. All machines to have the same username/password.
2. All machines to to be in the same Workgroup.
It's normally the latter that causes the problem. Especially if it prompts for a username/password when you try to connect...
Does your Win98 machine prompt for a username/password when you start it up?
Windows 95/98 are somewhat different to XP/Vista, so it's not surprising that's where the incompatibility lies...
Networking is surprisingly complicated - layers upon layers.
Stepping back:
Presumably, when you browse the network using Windows Explorer, you can see all the machines? But when you try to double-click the Win98 machine, it doesn't work? If that's true, it means all machines can see each other at some basic level - using TCP/IP or NetBIOS. It's best to use TCP/IP if you can, BTW, and you probably are...
If TCP/IP is working correctly, you should be able to find the IP address of every machine on your network, and then you should be able to "ping" each machine from any other. There's probably no point moving on until this is working. If you can't ping certain machines, try ensuring that the firewalls are correctly set on all machines. To be honest, if you're behind an ADSL router which uses NAT (they mostly all do) then a firewall isn't really needed on the machines, so it's OK to disable it. That should enable you to ping everything.
Once the basic networking is in place, the OS stuff has to be right. Various Microsoft protocols are employed to enable people to browse networks and access shared resources via Explorer. It's all a bit of a mess, actually...
For example, when you browse a network, what is actually happening? Well, of all your machines on the network, one of them is the "browse master". The other machines know about that, and they speak to the browse master machine to establish what Microsoft machines are known about. Whenever a new machine joins the network (i.e. boots up), an election is called, and if the new machine is more "powerful" than the current browse master machine, then this new machine becomes the browse master...
All that is a long way of saying that using Explorer to browse the network relies on a fair amount of stuff to work, and that's stuff that isn't always 100% reliable.
Far better to access network resources using "UNC pathnames". So, if you have shared out some stuff on a machine, you could get to it by typing "\\machine_name\share_name" in the Run box or in the address bar of a Windows Explorer window. E.g., suppose you've called one machine "DAC90", and on the machine you have created a share called "ServiceData", you could type "\\DAC90\ServiceData" in a Run dialog, and that should pop up an explorer window showing the contents of that folder... Of course, one can make desktop shortcuts to do the same thing...
The basic mechanism that allows machines to be accessible using a UNC pathname can be tested using the ping command. Rather than "ping 192.168.1.2", you can type "ping DAC90", and the machine should be able "resolve" the machine name into an IP address.
As I say, it's all about layers. And the more you peel back these layers, the more you want to cry. It's like a great big onion...
1. All machines to have the same username/password.
2. All machines to to be in the same Workgroup.
It's normally the latter that causes the problem. Especially if it prompts for a username/password when you try to connect...
Does your Win98 machine prompt for a username/password when you start it up?
Windows 95/98 are somewhat different to XP/Vista, so it's not surprising that's where the incompatibility lies...
Networking is surprisingly complicated - layers upon layers.
Stepping back:
Presumably, when you browse the network using Windows Explorer, you can see all the machines? But when you try to double-click the Win98 machine, it doesn't work? If that's true, it means all machines can see each other at some basic level - using TCP/IP or NetBIOS. It's best to use TCP/IP if you can, BTW, and you probably are...
If TCP/IP is working correctly, you should be able to find the IP address of every machine on your network, and then you should be able to "ping" each machine from any other. There's probably no point moving on until this is working. If you can't ping certain machines, try ensuring that the firewalls are correctly set on all machines. To be honest, if you're behind an ADSL router which uses NAT (they mostly all do) then a firewall isn't really needed on the machines, so it's OK to disable it. That should enable you to ping everything.
Once the basic networking is in place, the OS stuff has to be right. Various Microsoft protocols are employed to enable people to browse networks and access shared resources via Explorer. It's all a bit of a mess, actually...
For example, when you browse a network, what is actually happening? Well, of all your machines on the network, one of them is the "browse master". The other machines know about that, and they speak to the browse master machine to establish what Microsoft machines are known about. Whenever a new machine joins the network (i.e. boots up), an election is called, and if the new machine is more "powerful" than the current browse master machine, then this new machine becomes the browse master...
All that is a long way of saying that using Explorer to browse the network relies on a fair amount of stuff to work, and that's stuff that isn't always 100% reliable.
Far better to access network resources using "UNC pathnames". So, if you have shared out some stuff on a machine, you could get to it by typing "\\machine_name\share_name" in the Run box or in the address bar of a Windows Explorer window. E.g., suppose you've called one machine "DAC90", and on the machine you have created a share called "ServiceData", you could type "\\DAC90\ServiceData" in a Run dialog, and that should pop up an explorer window showing the contents of that folder... Of course, one can make desktop shortcuts to do the same thing...
The basic mechanism that allows machines to be accessible using a UNC pathname can be tested using the ping command. Rather than "ping 192.168.1.2", you can type "ping DAC90", and the machine should be able "resolve" the machine name into an IP address.
As I say, it's all about layers. And the more you peel back these layers, the more you want to cry. It's like a great big onion...
