XP network woes

I am connecting a computer running Win XP Home with two running Win ME,
via a broadband router LAN hub and the Windows Home Networking wizard --
which is about all I know about networking!!

The XP computer used to run ME and the three-computer network worked
fine. Now it takes 30-40 secs after clicking on a shared drive in My
Network Places for it actually to connect and display the contents. Then
it works sluggishly until I don't use it for a while, when it
disconnects and needs another 30-40 sec connection time.

The two Win ME computers still work fine, at the original speed, with
one another, but are just as slow when contacting the XP machine. All
three are using 10-base LAN cards, but as I say they have been working
fine together until now so I don't think that's an issue.

Device manager shows the LAN card as working properly. To make sure,
I've uninstalled (physically pulled out) and reinstalled the LAN card
and Windows networking, but it makes no difference.

My first port of call was to see what the connections are. But in
Network Connections, when I try to call up the LAN's Status, nothing
happens. When I try to View Network Connections it says an unexpected
error has occurred. Therefore I can't even get as far as doing something
basic like changing its IP address to what I want (to 192.168.0.1 from
192.168.0.10).

I have Outpost firewall running on all three machines (two of which
remember work fine). I have tried closing and shutting it down on all
the machines but it makes no difference.

And since I connect to the Internet by LAN there is no dial-up
networking installed, so my first thought that Win XP firewall might be
the problem doesn't apply.

Can anyone help, please?






Mike Simpson

"Mike Simpson" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> I am connecting a computer running Win XP Home with two running Win
ME,
> via a broadband router LAN hub and the Windows Home Networking
wizard --
> which is about all I know about networking!!
>
> The XP computer used to run ME and the three-computer network worked
> fine. Now it takes 30-40 secs after clicking on a shared drive in My
> Network Places for it actually to connect and display the contents.
Then
> it works sluggishly until I don't use it for a while, when it
> disconnects and needs another 30-40 sec connection time.

Which protocol are the two ME machines running?

I believe WinXP doesn't come with NetBios installed by default so if
your network is using that you have to copy the files of the WInXP CD
and install it on that machine.

Regards
Sunil