I just got myself a new computer that runs Win XP. My old computer runs Win 98 2nd edition, and has about 7GB of stuff I want to move to the new computer. The old one doesn’t have a CD burner, but does have a network card. I’ve tried doing the direct cable connection thingy, to no avail.
Thus, the question. How do I connect these two computers together? Do I need to buy a hub and network them both together, or will a CAT-5 cable between them work just as well?
…maybe I should have paid the extra $50 to get the stuff to do this…
(assuming that both of the network cards have RJ45 sockets)You need a special ‘crossover’ cable to link the two without a hub; using an ordinary patch cable could damage the network cards.
Setting up should be just a case of opening up the Network applet in Control panel, then making sure that you have the Microsoft Networking client installed, plus TCP/IP and Netbeui (plus a bit of tinkering with IP addresses maybe).
I’ve founf that Windows XP seems to experience delays in browsing/connecting to network resources, I haven’t yet found out why…
When we changed hard drives and operating systems, we put the old hard drive in as well. We have a choice of booting up to either hard drive, although the one with XP is the default.
Not only did we not have to bother with transferring data, but I can still run the few things that will not run on XP, even with the compatibility wizard.
The “crossover cable” mentioned above is what you want to use to link two PC’s together without a hub. You can usually buy these pre-made, although if you know anyone with the appropriate tools they’re easy to make (I’ve made countless “normal” network cables as well as crossover cables). Then it’s just a matter of enabling file sharing on the Win98 machine and using the XP machine to copy the files. There are a couple of snags you can hit occasionally, mostly involving one machine not “seeing” the other, but they’re not too difficult to work around.
In the past few hours, I’ve managed to get my hands on a nice little hub and the appropriate RJ45 cables to network the two computers together. As I suspected would happen, the thing still isn’t quite working like I expected it to.
I set up the appropriate cables and the hub, plugged everything in, and started both computers. Ran the wizard on Win XP to set up a LAN, and had it spit out a setup disk to run on the Win 98 computer. The Link and Receive lights on the hub blink happily for both cables, but the computers don’t recognize each other on the network. The workgroup names are the same, computer names different, sharing has been enabled on both computers. Windoze troubleshooter said it was out of ideas. Anyone? Anyone?
An alternative if all else fails would be to put the old hard drive into the new computer temporarily, and copy the files over to the new computer’s original hard drive
FDISK does have an option for deleting a NON-DOS partition. Under option 3 “Delete prtition or logical drive” there is an option 4 to “Delete NON-DOS partion”
Once that’s done create a new primary partition, exit FDISK, reboot using to the Win98 CD and start the setup on the now clean disk.
How are your networking protocols configured on both machines? Are your TCP/IP addresses correct (ex, 192.168.1.1 & 192.168.1.2), or are you using another protocol, like NetBEUI? So long as both systems are running the same protocol, are in the same workgroup, and you have file sharing and Client for Microsoft networks installed) you should get connectivity.
Try connecting using the RUN command instead of using the Network Neighborhood. Type in \PCNAME\D$ where PCNAME is the name of the PC you’re trying to connect to. The D$ tells it to look for the D-drive. The $ is important since it allows you to connect to a drive that isn’t designated as shared by the user.
Set one machine to 192.168.0.1 with subnet mask 255.255.255.0 and the other to 192.168.0.2 with the same subnet mask.
Make sure both machines have TCP/IP and File and Printer sharing enabled.
Make sure that atleast one folder in each comp has been set to share. e.g. Right click on C: drive, click sharing, and enable sharing for that drive. This should make it available to the other comp.
Use start/run/winipcfg to test the IP address of the Win98 comp.
Use start/run/cmd then C:>ipconfig /all to list the ip address of the XP machine.
Try ping from one comp to the other.
In XP, click on Network Connections/My Network Places/View Workgroup Computers. Is it listing itself in the network atleast ?
In 98, click on My Network Places and look for something similar to View all computers.
Try running the XP wizard again on both comps. Choose the option similar to “my computer is not connected to the Internet but is connected to other computers in the network”.