Ive just been given my uncles old server. When I got it home and set up I found I could not log on to the domain. It said the domain was not available. Ive looked into it further and found that none of my computers can connect or even find the server on the network. When trying to access the internet through IE the page cannot be found. Connection fails in Outlook too. The server cannot connect to any of the network machines. It appears the server is completely isolated from the rest of the network. The server says its connected to the local area network. Any ideas on why im struggling?

When you say "set it up", do you mean plugged in the keyboard, mouse, monitor and network cable? It's likely that this server use to belong to a domain, and when you try to log on to it now it is looking for the domain controller for that domain and cannot find it. Therefore we need to remove it from the old domain. Once logged in to an account local to the server (from your post I assume you can do this), right-click My Computer and choose Properties. On the Computer Name tab, you will see an option "To rename this computer or join a domain, click Change". Click the Change button. Now, if you have a domain network, add it to your domain. If you are running a workgroup network, join it to this. You will need an Administrator account to remove the server from the old domain. If you've already done this, you might be facing an IP issue. Your server may have a static IP assigned from its old network. Go to Network Connections in Control Panel, right-click the network adaptor and choose Properties. Somewhere in the scrollable list in the middle will be an entry for TCP/IP v4 (may also be called "Internet Protocol" "IP version 4" or something similar). Double-click this and set it to Obtain IP Address automatically and Obtain DNS Server Address automatically. That ought to do the trick. It's probably also worth checking the settings for Windows Firewall (I'd disable it altogether, if you have a SOHO router that has a firewall that's usually all you need). If you're still stuck, post back and I'm sure some smart person will come to your aid. Before you do, run some basic tests like pinging the server from a known-good computer and pinging a known-good computer from the server. The results may help shed some light on the problem. Hope this helps .Dave

Your a superstar Dave. It was the IP setup. Thanks ever so much!!!