The following 4 somputers have been setup with the following installation for over ONE year with no problems: 1 server XP pro - 2 NICs (one adsl to the internet, one for the LAN - 192.168.0.1) ICS for the other computers 2 workstations Windows98 192.168.0.2 and 3 1 workstation WindowsXP Pro 192.168.0.4 for over a year everything was FINE - file and print sharing, internet, the works all of a sudden, the network suddenly became "inaccessable" for the workstations - no internet, no access to files or printers... the server is still on the internet but none of the computers can ping each other when this happens - restarting all the computers doesn't help Then, don't ask me why, anywhere between 10 minutes and 2 hours later the network is back, for seemingly no reason at all just for kicks i turned all the computers on tonight, made sure the network was working on all of them, then didn't touch any of the computers for 2 hours. Came back, network gone again. I'm pulling my hair out here - when these problems first started it was once or twice a day - now it's up to 8-10 times per day and increasing - i've tried EVERYTHING (i think :) ) - reinstalling the network, changing ip's, changing workgroup names even!'' The firewall is disabled. The server does NOT act as a workstation and nobody is allowed to touch it but myself - something I do only about once every two months or so, so i KNOW that nobody screwed anything up that I don't know about. I'm thinking that MAYBE (not sure) the problems started when I installed SP1 on the server... but since the problems started only gradually I can't be 100% sure. So here I am, babbling on like this - i would REALLY appreciate any help anyone could give me!!! Thanks in advance :)

Not sure why you are having a problem, but if it were me with that many PCs I'd have gotten a four port Linksys router a long time ago and set up a LAN so that each PC was independent...

Next time it goes down, run: netsh diag gui (in RUN box) on the server to start XP's own network diagnostics tool - any faults will be shown in red. I have to agree with rac tho - get a router to supply ur dhcp/internet to the other PC's - it works out simpler to maintain/fault-find and ur server wont need to be switched on whenever ur other machines want internet access. Hope this helps

It had been working fine all day, then this evening..... I ran netsh diag gui and got the following results: Netcard - failed - [00655363] WAN-minport (ip)- failed - DNSServerSearchOrder - failed I didn't write down all the things that showed up in green - just the things that were in red Now, if i were really smart I'd know what to do with this information in order to fix the problem :) Anyone have any ideas??