I have a 6 pc + 1 notebook mixed (wired & wireless) LAN. All the machines are running fully patched XP. The setup (which has worked for quite some time) goes... cable modem -> wireless AP / 4 port router -> 16 port switch. 3 wired pc's hang off the switch. Off the AP/router is a phone router for Vonage. Also off the AP/router is a NAS.
Recently, 1 of the wired and 1 of the wireless boxes underwent fresh XP reinstalls to clean them up. Since then, the wired boxes will drop from the network... ie: their shares will drop from My Network Places, and they won't show up when I search for computers near me. If I reboot them, they (and their shares) reappear... but then will disappear again after a while. NOTE: They still have internet access. They can all still see the NAS drive. They can all still print to the network printer. They just disappear from the LAN after a while.
Things I've checked/tried:
Nothing is set to power down after X time. The machines are on 24/7.
They all share the same group name.
None of them are named the same.
I've run "netsh winsock reset" on all machines & rebooted.
I've reset all router multiple times, one at a time down the line.
It's interesting to note that the 3 machines that are consistently dropping from the LAN are the wired pc's. Yet as I stated earlier, they still maintain their other connectivity (ie: NAS, printer & internet). Therefore, I tend to eliminate any of the network hardware as the culprit... I mean a packet is a packet, right?
So I'm left with a windows setting somewhere I've overlooked. Any ideas?
Recently, 1 of the wired and 1 of the wireless boxes underwent fresh XP reinstalls to clean them up. Since then, the wired boxes will drop from the network... ie: their shares will drop from My Network Places, and they won't show up when I search for computers near me. If I reboot them, they (and their shares) reappear... but then will disappear again after a while. NOTE: They still have internet access. They can all still see the NAS drive. They can all still print to the network printer. They just disappear from the LAN after a while.
Things I've checked/tried:
Nothing is set to power down after X time. The machines are on 24/7.
They all share the same group name.
None of them are named the same.
I've run "netsh winsock reset" on all machines & rebooted.
I've reset all router multiple times, one at a time down the line.
It's interesting to note that the 3 machines that are consistently dropping from the LAN are the wired pc's. Yet as I stated earlier, they still maintain their other connectivity (ie: NAS, printer & internet). Therefore, I tend to eliminate any of the network hardware as the culprit... I mean a packet is a packet, right?
So I'm left with a windows setting somewhere I've overlooked. Any ideas?
