My Computers don't Talk anymore!!

[mattyrug]

I know it sounds sarcastic, but it's true!!
Here's the skinny-
I have an @home Cable Modem, My main machine is an Athalon 550 running Win98SE with ICSharing, and 2 Nic Cards, (1 Novell NE2000plus, 1 D-Link530)
The Cable Modem is on the NE-2000, which works fine. The 2nd card goes into the hub, which has 2 (all win98se, and 1 mac, sometimes more) Networked. I've tested all the NIC's in all the other machines, and all my cabling, in every possible config, and been over my network settings, and manually assigned IP Addresses to each machine.
Every once and a while, the computers will see each other, but when you try to move a file, or simply click on the computer in Network 'Hood, any one of the computers will lock.
I know the NIC's, and the Hub are good, not too, too sure about the IP addresses, but I assigned them all manually in succesion (1st computer being 192.168.0.1, and so on...)
I'm completely lost......
been over and over it, even formatted and re-installed on the main machine........

 

[hyperphate]

What do you mean by sarcastic?

I don't know about your problem, I'm relieved i solved my own network problems, it was a virus.. i forgot those things existed.

 

[1KrazyFool]

Your ICS server will also act as DHCP, so try setting your clients to use DHCP and see if that helps.

 

[mattyrug]

Thanx Guys
i found it.....
here's one i can chalk up to my own stupidity........
i encountered a registry error on one of the client machines, so ok, i ran regclean, verified the registry, blah, blah....
i didn't think to actually verify that my network card was working!! I realized there was a problem when i disconnected the one computer and the rest of the network was fine....
so to no avail, i removed the net card, removed the drivers, removed the keys in the registry, and did a re-install of the card, and it works fine.

My guess is that in the registry the card was assigned an IP address that conflicted with one of the other machines.... here's why.....

I noticed in the stupid D-Link setup that an address is automatically assigned to the card, which will over-ride any TCP/IP settings in the registry, and also under the advanced properties for the card. (I actually read the Hardware book, for once) I set the value to "not present", and my problems went away!!
Sometimes the problem is obvious!!
The Obvious is that I get stupider every day!!