I have a couple of questions about a problematic network that I'm repairing.
First of all, does Windows XP Home (hey stop laughing, it wasn't my idea to use that) place limits on how many PCs can connect to it simultaneously? All the computers on the network can see the computer using nbtstat and ping, etc, but when I try mapping a share from the Home PC it says "too many connections" when all 9 computers that they have are connected to the network. So only a few seem to be able to connect to the share at a time. I know you can change this limit in XP Pro, I'm not sure how to do it in Home.
The second bit of weirdness with this network, possibly related to the problem above, is that when one particular PC connects to the network, it blocks access of a couple of other PCs so that they can't browse the network shares through the GUI. Only one PC shows up on their list of shares when the "weird" computer in the corner is connected. They can still ping every PC on the network and still have net access.
They've all got unique names, they're using static IPs, they can all get internet access, I've set up lmhosts and hosts files (which seem to work since they can see each other?) on the malfunctioning PCs, but something with NetBIOS in the Windows browser goes haywire if they're all connected at the same time so that I can't share files or even browse the network through the affected PCs. The other non-affected PCs seem to be working fine while this is all happening.
Everything is connected together by 3 switches, with the PCs grouped by 3 to a switch, except for a couple connected directly to the main switch connected to the router. Could the switches have anything to do with the NetBIOS browser weirdness?
First of all, does Windows XP Home (hey stop laughing, it wasn't my idea to use that) place limits on how many PCs can connect to it simultaneously? All the computers on the network can see the computer using nbtstat and ping, etc, but when I try mapping a share from the Home PC it says "too many connections" when all 9 computers that they have are connected to the network. So only a few seem to be able to connect to the share at a time. I know you can change this limit in XP Pro, I'm not sure how to do it in Home.
The second bit of weirdness with this network, possibly related to the problem above, is that when one particular PC connects to the network, it blocks access of a couple of other PCs so that they can't browse the network shares through the GUI. Only one PC shows up on their list of shares when the "weird" computer in the corner is connected. They can still ping every PC on the network and still have net access.
They've all got unique names, they're using static IPs, they can all get internet access, I've set up lmhosts and hosts files (which seem to work since they can see each other?) on the malfunctioning PCs, but something with NetBIOS in the Windows browser goes haywire if they're all connected at the same time so that I can't share files or even browse the network through the affected PCs. The other non-affected PCs seem to be working fine while this is all happening.
Everything is connected together by 3 switches, with the PCs grouped by 3 to a switch, except for a couple connected directly to the main switch connected to the router. Could the switches have anything to do with the NetBIOS browser weirdness?
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