My Win98 PC is used as a broadband proxy server on my LAN (hard-wired not Wifi). Unfortunately this old machine has a tendency to spontaneously reboot at odd times for no apparent reason. However, when rebooted it used to rejoin the LAN without problem, but recently it has been refusing to connect until I've rebooted a few times. It uses an old 3COM 3C509 network card and the drivers are installed and working. After a few reboots it usually comes up working and I have LAN access to the Internet until it reboots again, but recently it has been booting up without LAN access. I have had to reboot up to 10 times before it will accept a ping from another PC. Tonight I am stuck, it will not rejoin the LAN at all. Obviously there must be a service or process which has failed to start, but what process is it and how do I start it without doing all these multiple reboots? Is it an exe file that has failed to start? By the way Device manager shows the NIC is working and drivers are installed and working correctly. So why would it come up on the LAN sometimes and not others? Thanks. Tommy.

go to run, type in sfc scan the system files to see if any are corrupt.

Check your network neighborhood. (right click and properties) The last tab should have several options one of which should be automatically rejoin to network when connected or something along those lines. I believe that is what you want checked, been awhile since I used 98 so I can't remember all the wording. Also is your system set to DHCP? if so you could assign this comp a manual address within the DHCP range and set up it's other settings accordingly.