Hornet303

Im not sure I understand why you need to use WINS. Do Win 95/98 clients not support DNS? Its been a while since Ive used one, but Im pretty sure they do. Anyway, try a few different tests such as trying to map a network share via dos prompt. try pinging the server with its nebios name, as well as its dns name. It sounds like its taking a while for the authentication to initiate when you log in via the network neighborhood. Sometimes its hard to force it. Also, when you have local users on the WIN 95/98 machine, as well as on the DOMAIN, authentication becomes tricky. If you are using the same usernames, the passwords MUST match. This is what happens. user a logs into a local computer. using a USERNAME and a PASSWORD now, when that user goes to brows the domain, the domain asks who is wanting access. So, the 95/98 client uses the USERNAME and PASSWORD the user typed in to log into the local computer, and it goes to match it against the domain list. Unless those accounts match exactly, you'll be forced to authenticate to the domain. It becomes tricky and does take a long time to initiate. Once the users log in to a share or whatever, does it work fast afterwords? Anyway, Im suprised that you cant log into the domain more than once using a 9x client. that seems rediculous, and should be fixed by now Id imagine. Anyway, I try to not use WINS, use DNS instead. Unless you guys have reasons why youd want to use WINS, Id like to hear.. as Im not very fond of WINS. jeff

If you feel brave, and your system is running normal now, I found that the Nvidia drivers 21.88 are very good. The earlier Det 4's seemed to have problems, but the 21.88 fixed stuff liek Dark Age of Camelot and I havent experienced any issues yet. j

Hi Clutch, I write you because I know you seem to have quite an extensive knowledge of Windows networking and such. I read your responses on a regular basis, and respect you for the help you've offered. So here is my issue, and Id like your input. Currently, I have a windows NT 4.0 network. Im planning the migration to Win2k, and hope to have that done by years end. Here is my delimma. I have a network of 3-4 server, 60 desktops. Of the servers, I have a sql server 7.0 server which we use for heavy database management and storage. This box is a Dell 6300 with dual xeon processors, raid 5 drives, 2gb ram. We also have a identical server in a co-location site. We have 2 firewalls, one on the LAN side, and one on the co-located server site. Between the firewalls, we have an encrypted tunnel, but the tunnel is uni-drecitional. We can send ANYTHING to the co-located server, but the co-located server, cant send anything back. The logic behind us is that its ok for us to send it info, but if the server is compromised at the co-located site, we dont want the hackers or whatnot to have access to our lan. NOW, we have signed contracts with a client of ours to design and host their pages, but in order to do so, it requires real time inventory status. So, ideally, we'd like the web server to be able to contact the SQL server on the lan to process queries. and return values to the web server. But our goal is to do this in the most secure way possible. Things that I can think of: the easiest would be to allow the web server to send out on the SQL port ONLY to our server here. have the firewall ONLY allow SQL packets to ONLY our sql server. that is my question to you, do you consider that safe or not? next, we can get into leased lines between the two, but that seems expensive and difficult. Let me know what you think. If anything else pops up in your head as a viable solution, Id really like to listen. Let me know. jeff

AlecStaar, Wow, thanks for the great info. Im going to refer back to it when I have a moment to take notes. Thanks again! jeff

Lots of traffic is being generated due to the Nimda virus. I know my DSL connection at work is getting hammered. And this was all discoverdon the 24, so it matches your timeframe jeff

Thanks Clutch, Your words are helpful. And to answer your questions: 1. The nature of the data that will be transferred is that of rather simple inventory type data. Nothing too crazy to worry about. The biggest concern is allow any traffic to our LAN here. 2. Currently, the speed we have between our two SQL servers (note: it sounded like you didnt understand that we do in fact have 2 sql severs. One on the LAN side, and one on the Co-location site). I also looked into the replication of the two, but from what I understand, it requires enterprise versions, which the license on a dual processor on a web server is very expensive. Its still an option, but also like you said, you still have periods between replication time, which is an important issue Im glad you brought up. Anyway, the speed is an ADSL accoutn rated at 1.54mb So its decent, but like anything, a high amount of requests will kill the bandwith. 3. I am unaware of how many records per session. Most likely only 1. And of course it would be desireable to lower this to as little as possible, as well as keep record length into account. Like I said, this stuff should be relativly small. Another thing, we currently have a very sercure IPSEC tunnel between the two firewalls. So, all that data is encrypted, so I feel this is relatively safe. I just wanted to write everything down, and have someone else look at it for a bit so I can eliminate leaving any holes open. Also with the very nature of SQL server, and our given application, little traffic should be send across.. The biggest being the records requested. Thanks, your comments will help in the design of the app. I appreciate your time. j

I bet if you bought an Geforce MX even, you'd never go back. Buy a GTS or a GF2 Pro and you'll be like 'man I had no idea' just friendly speculation. TNT1's were awesome when they came out. I still run one in a POS server of mine! Good luck j

I used to get COMPLETE freezes for 8-10 seconds every once an hour or so when I played Diablo 2 and Tribes 2. I narrowed it down to the SB Live card. It only happend on EAX games. Anyway, I downloaded the SHS's sblive drivers and those things flattended those problems out well. This is all on Win2k. And I never had the problems in D2 until I bought the Live card. To try to narrow it down, try diasbling EAX on half life and try it then.. see if it pauses then. jeff

and it appears to only be for th 5.1, not the regular live or value live. Oh well, SHS's drivers seem to work well enough. jeff

Im also curious to the person having the degredation issue, what Service pack were you running on Win2000? Supposedly, SP2 is supposed to fix most of the stuff that the 4-1 patch fixes. What is the general consensious on this? I may be getting an AMD/Via setup soon, and would like to know what people think. I recall reading something on Viahardware.com about how SP2 matches with the 4n1's, and the outcome was that SP2 fixed most of everything... thanks! jeff

Hey guys, when it comes to memory, I will never go non-name brand. Memory is too important and a pain in the a$$ to troubleshoot. If you're looking for good memory (non RDRAM) go to www.crucial.com. Most of the time, they have free shipping and there memory is top-top quality. Crucial is a Micron company. I bought microns for my company for many many years, now we have to buy gateway computers (due to our relationship with gateway), but all gateway machines STILL use Micron memory. Anyway, crucial.com has excellent memory, usueally free 2day shipping, and really good prices. Currently a PC133 256mb dimm cas 2 is 35.99, with free shipping. thats pretty damn good, and you'll never have to second guess your memory. Just incase you guys were lookin for new memory.. the PC2100 is a good deal there as well, they just dont deal in RDRAM jeff

personally, Ive been playing Starcraft a lot on my LAN at home. I have 3 computers set up on a 100mb switched network. Games get long sometimes, and never had any computer give me **** (or drop to the desktop). 1 computer is running Win XP(RTM via devilsown release), the other 2 are windows 2k, sp2 computers. All configured well. havent tried much battle net stuff. Theo nly thing that I can think of us that your connection to battlenet is not very strong. You should ping it and see what kind of response times you get. Perhaps when you uprgraded to win2k, your modem driver is old.. or not as well implemented. or maybe you have it set to some setting (com port too slow).. Im on a shared cablemodem on my network at home, so Ive never had this problem. j

BNC, wow its been a long while since ive even seen a NIC that supports BNC.. back in the day, they used to come as combos. Dude, buy some nics and a swtich. You can get those starter kits for sub 100 I think. jeff

I know for me, I had to forward port 113 to my computer on my router (linksys 4pt) to be able to use Identd. The problem is that my computer would claim what I am, and Identd then goes back to check. When it cant find port 113, or nothing behind it. it fails. Now that I have it forwarding to my computer, it answers and I get a successful connection. 5190 is AOL IM's port. Im not sure if its the same with filetransfer. Forward taht port to your computer and try it. It does get confusing when you're dealing with both people behind a nat or firewall. Also, here is a site that I go to to check out what port does what.. maybe itll help some of you guys http://www.ec11.dial.pipex.com/port-num.htm have fun.. jeff

just set the folder options to show classic mode. screw the preview thing entirely.

I never used the directX file. I just installed and ran.. no problems. Im not sure what video drivers im using.. could be 12.41 dets. j

The MP demo worked fine for me on XP RC2 with my k62-400 with 256mb of RAM and my TNT2 card. Pretty low end, but its my internet computer, not my game computer. Anyway, it ran fine.. a bit slow and hte graphics werent too sharp, but it ran good. jeff

I am runnin a exchange server 5.5 at my work. SMTP is open on the firewall and gets handed off to the server inside. Now, is there a way to filter unwanted mail? I can tell that SPAM is going thru, cause the admin box will get messages every once and a while that are from NOBODY or <> and have subjects like "lose 20lbs in 1 day"... Currently I have routing off. But if I set up authenticaion, I wont get mail from some sites. Anyway, I would appreciate any points in the direction.. thanks jeff

one thing I noticed is with my vpn. I can get authenticated and such, but I had to change networks. for example.. I was on a 10.0.0.x network, and the network that I was connecting to was 10.0.0.x as well. Now, when I ping something, I think it gets messed up. I changed one network to 10.0.1.1 and now everything is cool. Im not doing this from a pdc to a bdc, im doing it from a remote computer to another, thru a firewall. maybe thatll help. j

Hellbringer, what version of the Netgear NIC's are you using. the 310's are pretty good. The ****in 311's suck ***! they are the cheaper/smaller version of the netgear. I've personally bought and installed 15 netgear cards, in servers and desktops alike and never had one give me ****. The drivers are supported by Win200 automatically, no need to install anything. I bought 1 311 because I thought they discontinued the 310, and I cant believe how crappy those things are, I dont even remember how I got it to work, but it was lame. Took it back, found a place that still sells 310's and bought it. Works great. Also, I have 2 8pt switches, and 1 4pt HUBS from them and never had a problem with them. Wait, I have a 4pt switch as well. Never any problems. Personally, Id choose 3com or Intel any day of the week for NIC's though. For simple solutions, on home computers, Netgear 310's are good! Just my experience. Id nver by a 311 again.. the 312's look kinda cool cause they have the WAL hookup. j

you werent very clear with how it sounds 'dirty'. If you have problems with humming or when you can hear disk access (thru your speakers) then your card is picking up some power supply signals and amplifying them. Try moving the card to the lowest slot or furthest away from the power supply. I remember having this problem with my SB16 WWAAAAY back in the early 90's. there wasnt really a good way to fix it. Does your card have a volume control in the back? If so, lower that to as low as possible and use your speakers to amplify the music, instead of relying on the card. Hope that helps.. jeff

you might just want to use the built in drivers for that card. wait, if its a 550, that makes it a TNT. Just use the regular dets on that. They have backward support to the origional TNT's. I was thinking you were referring to the V330.. where you'd have to use the regular (microsoft) divers for that. j

Just read and downloaded the new SBLIVE drivers that were posted in the news section of this page.. Anyone use them yet? My work machine dont have an SBLIVE, so Ill hve to wait. But Id like to hear if anyone has anymore luck with these. SBLives can be a pain in the a$$ somtimes with AMD machines, and some chipsets other than Intel chips. Let me know!!! Jeff

Ill put it on my FTP for a while: server: 64.3.112.103 port 303 login: sblive/sblive take it easy j

Hey, try to install NvMax, and turn off the vsync on D3D, you might want to do it on OGL as well. It worked for me, my Diablo 2 was flickering like a ***** too, ****in annoying. Let me know if that works jeff