Network was working, now it isn't!

[nrossi]

After some initial struggles and a lot of help from users here, I got networking between MDK 9.1 and Win98 boxes working. I was able to use printers on each machine and access files on my Win98 box from Linux. Happiness reigned.

 

Last week it just stopped working, mostly. I can still see and read the Win98 files, but can no longer use the printer on the Win98 box. From Win98, I can no longer see anything on my Mandrake box, not even the printer. In fact, Windows does not even recognize that there is another machine on the network.

 

I have changed no settings on either box and have verified that they are as they were when things were working correctly. I can successfully ping each box from the other. A possibly related datum: I have a FAT32 partition called Winshare which I would imagine should have been visible from the Win98 box. I never could see it. Probably something configuration related.

 

Can someone suggest what I should try in order to debug these issues?

[tyme]

first step, in windows open up windows explorer and type in:

\\xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx\ replacing all those lovely little x's with the IP of your mandrake box, see if that yields any results. if not, well-we'll go from there :)

[nrossi]

\\xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx\ from Windows Explorer on the Win98 box shows the printer attached to the Mandrake box, and "PDF-generator", but not the FAT32 partition called Winshare. They appear in Network Neighborhood under a group named Mdkgroup, and the Mandrake box (Gateway) appears under that group. Neither of those showed up (even after several reboots) until I explicitly entered the IP address of the Mandrake box in Windows Explorer.

 

Entering http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/ from IE on the Win98 box gives me the default Apache screen on the Mandrake server.

 

From the Mandrake box I can see and read the Win98 shared drives, but not the Win98 printer.

 

I can successfully ping one box from the other.