A friend of mine got a D-Link router to hook up his two computers to the cable modem. As far as the internet goes everything is kosher. Both computers can surf the web and recieve email without any trouble.

He also wants to use one folder for images and MP3's and access it from both computers. This is where the problem comes in.

The upstairs computer (WinXP home) can see both computers in network places without any trouble and even pull shared files from the downstairs computer. It will also ping the downstairs computer without any trouble.

The downstairs computer however will not see anything in network neighborhood. The flashlight just looks around and eventually locks network neighborhood up. I can't ping the upstairs computer at all from downstairs. It just times out. I unistalled the protocols and network drivers on the downstairs computer and reinstalled everything, but it still won't work.

A side note is that I can ping the router (192.168.0.1) with no trouble from the downstairs machine.

If I ping the upstairs computer by using the computer name "ping darra" it will resolve the IP address "pinging darra [192.168.0.112] with . . . " but then the request times out. I would think that if it couldn't see the computer at all it would return would be "unknown host."

I recommended that he try a different network cable, and do an install in place of windows 98 just in case. Is there anything else I'm missing besides a possible re-format re-install??

could it be a bad cable even though the router works great sharing the internet and I can see both computers on the XP box and even download shared files from the 98 box?

I made sure both cables were plugged into ports 1&2 of the hub/switch side of the router.