Win XP Networking Problems?

[dbvand]

I have 6 workstations and a server at my office. The server is running Windows 2000 Server and 5 of the 6 workstations are running Windows 98. The other is running Windows XP Professional.

I have few problems with the Win 98 machines and many problems with the one XP machine. My accountant says that a tech guy she uses told her that XP has a lot of problems running on networks, but that's hard for me to believe. Up until now, I've heard nothing but good things about XP but my experience seems to confirm this.

The XP machine is a P3-1000 with 384MB of SDRAM on an Intel MOBO using onboard video and ethernet.

I've tried pinging the server to see if it was a bad network wire and got no errors.

Problems are very long logon times and errors accessing files on the server. A CAD program we use won't hardly read files from the server, we copy them to the local hard drive to use them and then back to the server so they get backed up. When logging on, it goes to "Applying Personal Settings" and hangs for 5-7 minutes before completing the logon process.

Any ideas?

[snakefoot]

What network protocols(tcpip, netbios, ipx, etc-) have you installed on the different machines ?

What network equipment are you using to connect the different machines (NICs(dual), Switches, Hubs, Routers, etc) ?

What server-services(DNS-server, DHCP-server, Domain-Server etc.) are running and on which machines ?

Not much experience in network troubleshooting myself but usually it is because of bad nics, bad cables, bad hub/switch-ports, full- vs. half-duplex and I have seen several articles about slow down because the primary and secondary DNS address was incorrectly setup at the clients.

[King]

DNS!! XP is a DNS nightmare, you MUST run a local DNS server in a win2k server environment, if WinXP workstations are involved.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/en/server/help/default.asp

this link, under 'Networking' has all you need about setting up a DNS server on your existing server. Please let us know if you need any help. And remember, an XP workstation on a Win2k Domain should only have the local DNS server as it's Primary DNS.

And yes, XP Pro can be wonderful on a network, XP Home stinks though, especially on a Domain.

Good Luck, I'm still trying to fully figure out DNS ;)

[lmayeda]

I had the same problem with an XP on a LAN with W98, WNT and W2Ks all using DHCP to obtain IP address. I would get the XP to see the network and vice versa then in a hour or so it would disconnect. I finally assigned the XP a fixed IP address and 3 weeks later, no problem. Don't know what the issue is, all I know is it is working fast.

[dbvand]

Hey All,

I just got King's message, but I actually got the problem fixed the other day and he is right, it was a dns problem. I didn't have my win2k server set up as a dns server. This didn't matter much to the win98 machines but it obviously did to the XP machine.

I actually suspected dns and since I didn't know how to set it up, I just hired a networking guy to come in and fix it.

He said his experience with XP on a network has been very good AS LONG AS it's set up correctly and that mainly applies to DNS.

Thanks to all for the posts.