[mikelalonde]

I am working at a company that has had 4 computers networked together for quite some time. I have added two more computers, but they are not showing up on the network.

I hard-wired them in, and I checked and made sure the cables are working. My network cable tester shows they are, and I also used a network cable that works with the other computers to test it and the computers still do not show up. So I don't think the cables are the issue.

I even set up a wireless device to connect to the network that way. When it is on one of the other computers it works, when it is on one of the two new computers it still does not work.

The new computers open up a network, but they can also see themselves on the network. Likewise, the other 4 computers cannot see either of the new computers on the network.

The computers all run XP. The new computers are kind of built from scratch from someone the owners know, and certainly aren't "new" by any stretch of the imagination.

They were on a 4-port switch, and now we have an 8-port we put it. The 4 main computers still see each other fine on it. We even had another switch and the same problem occurred. We bypassed the router altogether in favor of the switch and that didn't work either (although obviously our wireless didn't work with that, so it isn't really viable anyways).

All I need to do on these computers is connect them to the network and run a POS system on them back to the server (they are for a hot dog stand and bar).

Our computer guy and another person fairly familiar with these kinds of things (but certainly not experts) played with them for quite some time and couldn't figure out what the problem could be.

Any ideas? Or, if you need more information I can try to provide it.

 

[lorjack]

Can the new computers and old computers ping each other? It sounds like they aren't part of a domain are they on the same workgroup?

 

[mikelalonde]

I tried pinging to my laptop with a wireless connection and it timed out.

We added them with the same workgroup name, so it appears to be on a workgroup with the same game, but the computers can't see each other.

 

[johnwill]

Let's see this for each of the computers.


Hold the Windows key and press R, then type CMD to open a command prompt:

In the command prompt window that opens, type type the following commands, one at a time, followed by the Enter key:

Note that there is a space before the -n or the /ALL, but there is NOT a space after the - or / in the following commands.

NBTSTAT -n

IPCONFIG /ALL

Right click in the command window and choose Select All, then hit Enter to copy the contents to the clipboard.
Paste the results in a message here.

If you are on a machine with no network connection, use a floppy, USB disk, or a CD-RW disk to transfer a text file with the information to allow pasting it here.