LB's PC Bible Excerpts -2

Installing a Small Network

The trickiest part of most network installations is the cabling. If you're networking several PCs in the same room and you don't mind a few wires running along the floor, go ahead and do it yourself. But if you need to run cables through walls, or want to hide the wires for aesthetic reasons, hire a professional. In that case, you might as well contract out the whole cabling job.

While the other steps involved in setting up a network used to be pretty challenging, Windows 95, 98, and NT 4.0 make it pretty painless. The following guide will tell you just how to do it.

Warning: Do not attempt to follow these instructions on a PC that's running any other operating system, like DOS or Windows 3.1.

Install the Hardware

1. Power down each PC, open it up, install an Ethernet adapter in an available slot, and close up the PC. See "Installing Expansion Cards" in Chapter 8: Upgrade It Yourself, for more detailed instructions on that task.

2. Connect each PC to the Ethernet hub or ISDN router with Ethernet cables (see Figure 3).

3. Connect the hub's power supply and make sure that the power is switched on. (The hub should have a "power-on" LED status indicator.)

4. Switch the PCs back on.

   In Windows 95/98, the operating system should detect and configure the network card automatically. If you're prompted to assign your computer to a workgroup, use the default name, "workgroup."

   In Windows NT 4.0, you'll have to set up the adapter manually. Run the Network control panel, click the Adapters tab, click Add, choose the card from the list, and click OK. Follow any prompts to complete installation, then click OK to close the Network control panel, and click Yes to reboot the PC.

 

Figure 3 .............................. Connecting the hub.

5. After your network card is set up and the machine reboots, right-click the Network Neighborhood icon on the desktop, choose Properties, and click the Identification tab. Make sure the Workgroup is "workgroup," and that each PC has a different "Computer name."

 

Figure 4 .............................. Network identification.

If Windows networking support is installed without a glitch, when you power up your network, the hardware connection will be negotiated automatically. Status LEDs on the network adapters and on the hub will generally flash green to indicate a functional network connection.

Troubleshoot Common Problems
If you see green status lights on your hub, and the Network Neighborhood icon is visible on the Windows desktop, you can skip this section of the chapter and proceed to the next. Your network hardware is working. The next section shows you how to confirm this by sharing a sample file resource.

However, if your hub doesn't show a green status light for one or more computers, or when you start Windows it reports a problem with the network adapter at startup, you can probably resolve the problem by adjusting hardware settings.

In Windows 95/98:

1. Open the System control panel and click the Device Manager tab.

2. Examine the Device Manager entry for Network Adapter. (If there's a + sign in front of the entry, click it to expand the tree to show the icon for the adapter itself.) A yellow exclamation point next to the listing for your adapter indicates a conflict with some other hardware device (see Chapter 8, Figure 4).

3. Select the network adapter in the device list and click the Properties button at the bottom of the window.

4. Select the Resources Tab in the Network Properties window and inspect the settings for "Interrupt Request" and "Input/Output Range." If conflicts are reported under "Conflicting device list," you can reassign either of these values on this screen.

5. If you don't find an entry for your network adapter in the Device Manager list, close this window. You can ask Windows to redetect your adapter by selecting the Control Panel/Add New Hardware applet. Choose the option that asks Windows to perform an automatic search. If the network adapter still isn't detected, shut down the computer, open the case, and make sure the card is properly inserted in its motherboard slot.

In Windows NT. Troubleshoot network error messages by examining reports in the Event Log (log on as an administrator and choose Programs/ Administrative Tools (Common)/Event Viewer). To change the network adapter's configuration, open the Network control panel, click the Adapters tab, right-click the adapter icon, and choose Properties (see Figure 5).

 

Figure 5 .............................. Windows NT 4.0 network card settings

Other troubleshooting techniques. If the foregoing procedures don't eliminate the error messages, turn on the green lights, and make Network Neighborhood appear on the Windows desktop, you may need to change the settings on the board itself.

Newer ISA and PCI network adapters generally let you change their settings using software, but unfortunately that software may have to run in DOS mode. You can switch to DOS mode in Windows 95 or 98 by choosing Shut Down from the Start menu, checking Restart in MS-DOS Mode, and clicking OK. If you're running Windows NT and your PC's not set up to dual-boot to Windows 95/98 or DOS, you can get to DOS mode by booting from a floppy. (See Appendix A: DOS Survival Guide for help dealing with DOS.) Once you're at the DOS prompt, run your network card setup/diagnostics program. This may show that the card is preset to use IRQ 5 and port address 0300, where the Windows Device Manager showed only IRQ10 and port address 0240 as available resources. You can generally use the DOS configuration software to change the presets of the network card to something that will make Windows happy.

With older ISA adapters, if there's no software you'll probably need to shut off the computer, open the case, and change a jumper on the card (see Chapter 8, Figure 11).

If Windows seems to think your network adapter is working properly, but the status light on the hub is not green, this may mean that your adapter is configured for an inappropriate cable type. For instance, you may have a 10BaseT network, but the adapter may be set for Coax/ThinNet. Generally, this setting can be corrected by running the configuration software that came with the card.

In rare circumstances, you may have to install an adapter manually in Windows 95/98. The process is similar to the one described for Windows NT, except that the Add button is on the Configuration tab.

Test the Network
If the status lights on your hub indicate network hardware is configured properly, you can confirm whether Windows 95/98 or Windows NT 4.0 Workstation has properly configured software settings with the following procedure:

1. Pick one computer on the network to be a test server. On that PC, right-click Network Neighborhood and choose Properties. In Windows 95/98, make sure File and Print Sharing are installed by clicking the File and Print Sharing button (see Figure 6); in Windows NT 4.0, make sure the Server component is installed in the Services list. Choose the Identification tab and verify or assign a Workgroup name (normally "workgroup"). If you're modifying or installing these services for the first time, you'll be prompted to restart the computer.

 

Figure 6 .............................. Installing file and print sharing.

2. After the computer restarts, test if the network's working by sharing a folder as described in "To Share a Folder or Drive" in the next section.

3. Double-click the Network Neighborhood icon on the test server's desktop, and you should see an icon for the computer you're working on (since it is now a server). Double-click the computer's icon, and you should see the folder you shared (see Figure 7).

 

Figure 7 .............................. Checking for the test server in Network Neighborhood.

4. Go around to the other PCs on your network and repeat step 3 on each. If the test server and shared folder appears on all of them, congratulations: your network is up and running.

If you don't see the test server listing in one or more of the Network Neighborhoods on the other workstations, make sure that they all have the same name in the Workgroup field of the Identification tab of the Network control panel (the dialog you get when you right-click Network Neighborhood and choose Properties).