Help with 4 cpu network.. Please. :)

[IamDavid]

Can someone please help me, I am a network newbie idiot and I am going crazy.. I have 4 PC's in my home.. 3 Running XP and 1 running 98SE. All are running into a 6 port switch. (5 normal ports and 1 uplink) Then the switch is ran to my Cisco router for cable internet access. I can't seem to get them all to work at the same time. Usually I can get the 3 XP machines to connect to the internet and not the 98 one. But its not always that way, sometimes one or another of the other PC's won't connect. I know this isn't much to go on so if ya could, can you please answer a few questions..

I allow all the machines to obtain IP address automatically, should I be specifying them manually?

Should I also be specifying all the other setting, i.e.: DNS, Gateway, subnet mask ?

Does having a 98 machine mixed in with the XP machines cause any conflicts?

I run WNNTIPCFG on the XP machines that won't connect and they come up with a adapter default error or the DNS server not available and it resets the IP address to a strange IP address that isn't mine.

 

[rw120555]

I don't see any obvious reasons why your setup doesn't work fine. Two or three times now, I've had seemingly insolvable router problems that disappeared once I powered the router down for several minutes. If that doesn't work, you might check out Windows XP Network Troubleshooting. Good luck.

 

[IamDavid]

Thanks for the quick response.. I have tried the shuting off of the router before, many times. It works if the whole network is down but not if only 1 PC is down.. This has to be the most annoying problem I have ever had.