Win2k Peer-to-Peer networking problem

[MattH056]

Me and a friend recently got the Compaq Presario Athlon notebooks and installed windows 2000 on them. Everything has gone great and the machines are pretty nice.

My problem is in attempting to play Red Alert 2 on the computers networked together. We are using a passthrough cable to directly connect the cards together.

At home, connected to my hub, I can connect to an old win95 machine, but I cannot connect to my main win2k machine. So basically the problem comes down to how to connect two windows2000 machines together on a workgroup setting.

We attempted using TCP/IP with 192.68.0.1 and .2 as IPs with a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0. We attempted with IPX with Ethernet 802.3 and Ethernet II as the standard, both with no success. We tried NETBEUI as well, with no luck. Twice during all of this I was able to see his computer on the workgroup browsing window, but was unable to actually connect to it.

We set up accounts on both machines that matched our login ids and passwords that we used on our own computers adding each other to the Users group. This changed nothing. So, I'm at a loss on what to do and I hope someone here might be able to help.

Thanks

 

[NiPeng]

You didn't use the passthrough cable to connect to the hub?
Because that doesn't work.
(I asume passtrough is a crosscable.)

What did you try to test network connectivity?
Tried pinging the other machines?

 

[KGB]

Matt,

If you trying to connect withouta hub (card to card) you NEED to use a crossover cable.

 

[MattH056]

When we connected directly to each other, we used the passthrough (crossover) cable. There was no hub involved when we connected directly to each other.

 

[Kappo]

if you saw the machine at one point you may need to wait a few minutes for them to decide on which is the "computer browser". I commonly have this problem at home connecting my desktop and laptop...set one or the other to computer browser and the other the opposite way....then try to ping the other machine....

when you say that you could SEE it but not connect was it giving you an error of that computer name is not available? if the other computer comes up irratically you may want to try a new cable (sounds stupid but it has fixed one of my similar problems before).

Just to make sure you DID set up a profile for the other person? if you didnt you just have to enter a username and password to connect...

[edit]
also make sure that both of you are on the same workgroup
[/edit]

 

[MattH056]

Two times (out of about 400 it seemed like), I was able to see his computer, but he was unable to see me. We were both in the same workgroup that was set to something other than "WORKGROUP". The cable is a working cable that had been used as recently as a week or two earlier to connect to Win9x computers together.

We made accounts for each other on both computers and I even tried enabling the "guest" account on my computer and he still couldn't see me.

When I did see him, on clicking on the computer name it would say "Computer not available" or something similar to that.

Any ideas?

 

[neovan]

try installing the ipx/spx protocol...cuz i think that's what red alert 2 uses to connect...try it.

 

[MattH056]

Protocols tried:

TCP/IP with both entered ips and blank
IPX/SPX
NETBEUI

If our computers can't see each other on the windows network, they will not work on red alert.