Windows XP & Windows 95 crossover "network" doesn't work. Help, please

[SteveRoads]

Hi,

I wanted to connect two of my computers via a crossover cable, but for some reason they don't "see" each other.

The PCs are an old PII 233 with Win95 and an Athlon 1000 with Windows XP. I already tried to connect the XP PC with another XP laptop and it worked without any problems.

I have TCP/IP, MS Client for MS-Networks and file and printer network support installed on both machines. I didn't have set up an DNS or DHCP server as I don't need them, right? I didn't set any IPs manually either, but after doing it for the Windows 95 PC, I still couldn't "ping" it succesfully from the XP PC.

The XP PC is also connected to the internet by DSL on the SAME network card. I would just unplug the patch cabel and plug in the crossover cable in to the PC whenever I need files from my old PC (not very often, so I don't need another NIC so far).

Could anyone please help me there. Btw, I searched the forum but didn't find anything helpful.

I could imagine that the problem comes from two (very) different Windows versions, or can't that be a factor?

Any help is appreciated, even to tell me what a stupid question it might be, I am not very trained in networking.

Thanks in advance.

[bmh.01]

Most of the problems will come from the win 95 pc but it should still be possible, you will need to set IP's manually on both pcs as you don't have a dhcp server for them to get their ips from.

Other than I that i'm afriad I can't help anymore as its been a long time since i've done anything like this but I seem to remember something about Netbeui or something like that but then that may be irrelevant because you've installed tcp/ip installed on both pcs.

Sorry I can't help any further.

[Nox]

give your xp pc the ip address 192.168.0.1, subnet 255.255.255.0 and the other pc 192.168.0.2, same subnet. now try pinging. do the network connect lights come on on the network cards? your xp pc probably now wont go on the internet though as its likely to get a ip address for that network card from your isp.

95 is a nightmare to network, but in this case i think you may be having problems as your XP pc is thinking that network card connects to the internet, not to your other PC. You dont need DNS, though DHCP will be easy - XP does this automatically though. I would highly recommend getting another network card or a hub though. Oh, and write down any settings you change so you can put them back EXACTLY how they were before.


EDIT:

just seen it connects to an xp latop fine - XP has something called upnp, basically pnp for network devices. its a bit dangerous and other than switching it off i didn't look into it much, but it may be why they connect fine. it would also make me think the 95 pc is the problem one, and 95 networking is flaky. you can try sharing a directory on the 95 pc - than may make itself known on the network a little better. the important thing is to get them pinging though. so try static ip's as above.

Nox

[SteveRoads]

Thanks so far, won't have time to test that until after Christmas, but I give it a try.

Thanks to both of you!

[SteveRoads]

Okay, it worked as soon as I set the IP's. The thing I thought was that it would be sufficent to assign only one IP for the PC I want to conntact, but of course this doesn' work.

Unfortunatelly I had to reformat my hard drive of the Win95 PC later the day and it took me another two days to get the NIC working again, as it wasn't detected on reinstall of Win95. I had to remove it, restart Win95, shut down and reinstall the NIC, then it was detected ....? Mind robbing!

But thanks for your help, now everything is fine.