Freez up on Networking

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Chris - 24 Jul 2005 13:23 GMT

I have a Win ME as base hooked up by a Linksys to one XP and one win 98. The
other two are able to communicate fine with ME but recetly while having the
Networking open on ME, which lists the other two in there, it freezes the PC
(ME) by clicking on the icons. CTrl/alt/del says the program is not
responding. Then when I end task it I lose a few icons in the systray and
gets me a desktop with white background. Then I reboot to regain my systray
icons and back to normal.

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Dominik George - 27 Jul 2005 09:24 GMT

Chris schrieb:

> I have a Win ME as base hooked up by a Linksys to one XP and one win 98. The
> other two are able to communicate fine with ME but recetly while having the
[quoted text clipped - 3 lines]
> gets me a desktop with white background. Then I reboot to regain my systray
> icons and back to normal.

Hello,

first of all, there's a good reason for ME kicking systray icons when
you end Network Neighorhood using the Taskman. This is because both the
Explorer windows and the taskbar, as well as the desktop, belong to one
and the same process, namely explorer. When you kill any explorer
window, Windows will kill explorer.exe and immediately restart it. The
Systray-restart message is not correctly sent to or interpreted by the
programs placing an icon in the systray, and so they dont re-register or
redraw it.

Second, is there any Personal Firewall installed and active on one or
more of the clients? A malconfigured firewall on one host can badly
affect the other hosts if this host is voted to be a Local Master
Browser for your workgroup. It will then hold assignment tables for WINS
resolution, this is for the clients to translate NetBIOS names into DNS
names and IP addresses and vise versa. So try to disable any firewall
installed. I f the problem still occurs, try the next step. INFO:
ZoneAlarm will ALWAYS block access to Windows Shares in average or high
security levels, low is to disable the firewall. By the way, if you are
behind a router with integrated firewall, and have only trusted hosts on
your LAN, there's no point at using personal firewalls on any of the
computers. (Referring to Microsoft Knowledge Base and my own experience)

Third is to check the protocols (to N. Miller: yes, it is!). In all
three hosts network configurations (in Win2k and WinXP the properties of
the actual LAN-Connection, in WinME the properties of your network
neighorhood), the protocols TCP/IP and NetBEUI should be installed.
TCP/IP has to be sthe standard protocol, IPX can be removed without any
risk. Then, on ME, check if TCP/IP is correctly bound to your NIC, and
File- and Print Sharing is bound to TCP/IP -> NIC. Remove Client for
NetWare-networks, if it is there, and install Client for
Microsoft-networks. Remove Microsoft Family Logon as it will override
any other logon settings! Now, if it still does not work, disable QoS on
XP and 2k.

Hth,
Dominik

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Steve Winograd [MVP] - 27 Jul 2005 10:41 GMT

>Chris schrieb:
>> I have a Win ME as base hooked up by a Linksys to one XP and one win 98. The
[quoted text clipped - 43 lines]
>Hth,
>Dominik

What's the reason for disabling QoS? QoS doesn't do anything unless
there are application programs specifically written to use it. In
particular, it doesn't, as some people believe, reserve any of the
network bandwidth for itself.

Why install NetBEUI? TCP/IP, by itself, is sufficient for all Windows
networking functions, and Internet access requires TCP/IP.

Nothing in Windows networking (at least since Windows for Workgroups
3.11) has ever required NetBEUI. NetBEUI is an unsupported protocol
in Windows XP, which means that Microsoft hasn't tested it and
recommends not using it. It's extremely unlikely that NetBEUI will be
available in the next version of Windows (Windows Vista, scheduled for
late 2006).

In my experience, using more than one network protocol is likely to
cause browsing problems, especially when there are computers running
Windows XP. I remove NetBEUI from every computer when I set up or
troubleshoot a network.

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Best Wishes,
Steve Winograd, MS-MVP (Windows Networking)

Please post any reply as a follow-up message in the news group
for everyone to see. I'm sorry, but I don't answer questions
addressed directly to me in E-mail or news groups.

Microsoft Most Valuable Professional - Windows Networking
http://mvp.support.microsoft.com

Steve Winograd's Networking FAQ
http://www.bcmaven.com/networking/faq.htm

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