I recently had cable modem installed, and once I did, I lost my home network. I have a new LinkSys 4-port Router, and I'm able to share the internet signal to everyone in the house, but am not able to do any file sharing, or printer sharing any longer. I did try to power down everything, and then power up the a) router b) cable modem c) computers in that order, thinking that this might work. If anyone knows how to get me going in the right direction, please jump in. Thanks in advance.

try pinging one computer from another computer and see if you get a response from it. workgroup names might have changed since you're using a router

you installed a cable modem and a linksys router at the same time? what were you using before as your hub/switch? does your linksys have NAT turned on? generally you will be given one IP address from your cable provider. the internet router, the linksys, will setup a local network using the 192.168.x.x network. all of your machines should use dhcp to get an ip address from the linksys. You should be able to set static ip's for your local machines if you need them in the dhcp prefrences of the linksys router. if your local machines are not on the same subnet as the router you wont be able to browse your local machines. meaning that your local machines need to have the first 3 sets of numbers of their ip address equal to the routers local ip adress. ussually 192.168.1 or 2 or 0 if they dont what happens is that the linksys sees your machines ip address compares it to its own and they dont match up so its sends the information to the internet rather then bouncing back to the local network. from there the information is lost since the internet generally has no way to use microsoft network browsing and even if it did you would not get the machines you were requesting. your net browsing and such works because the address's are forwarded to the internet. the router remembers what ip sent the information. when the information comes back to the router the router forwards it the requesting machine.

thanks for the responses. I did not install both at the same time, but purchased the linksys router today. Prior to this router, and I had 8 port router with no documention, but the internet was successfully shared, and prior to cable modem, the network was working very well. Once I installed the cable modem, the network disappeared. I am unable to ping any machine in the workgroup, as I had in the past. The ip address of the signal incoming from the cable modem was 67.xxx.xxx.xxx - but now the ip address of the network seems to be 192.168.1.1. Hope this helps. I'm confused.

right your local machines need to have an ip address with the first 3 sets of numbers equal to 192.168.1 the 4th number is irrelevant. the ip address's of you local machines need to start with the same 3 numbers. the linksys router is trying to use NAT on your internet connection. diagram. internet(67.xx.xx.xx)-->linksys(192.168.2.1 using NAT or Network Address Translation)---> your local machines. local machine has old ip of say 67.xx.1.1 you local machine must have a gateway of 192.168.2.1 you try to browse your local network. your machine sends the browse request to the gateway, the linksys router. the router looks at the the request and says this request is not for the 192.168.2.0 network so it must be an internet address. so it forwards it to the internet. the internet tries to reach the ip 67.xx.1.1 address. chances are it cant find that address. try setting the ip address of two of your local machines to 192.168.1.2 and 192.168.1.3 and see if you can ping between them. or just set them to dhcp. prolly should write down their old address and gateway first. heres what im thinking. before the new cable modem you had set your local machines ip manually. the cable company gave you some information on how to setup your network. gave you some ip addresses to use. the linksys perhaps told you to set the gateway of your machines to 192.168.2.1 ---THIS IS WHAT YOU SHOULD DO NOW. record the ip address's of the machines right now. then set the machines to use DHCP. in xp right click "my network places" choose properties. right click local area connection. choose properties. click on Internet protocol(tcp/ip) click properties write down what information is there. THEN click the "Obtain IP address automatically" click ok the process is much the same for 98 and 2k. although you may need to reboot. ==== chances are you have purchased several IP addresses from your ISP. if so we can discuss other possibilities.