XP Bridge won't

Hi,

I have an XP Home SP2 PC with a Safecom PCI wireless card, connecting via a
point to point link with another building.

Now I occasionally want to connect a laptop to it via the Ethernet port
(with a crossover cable). As far as I can see all I need to do is set up a
bridge between the wireless card and the Ethernet.

(DHCP and Internet access are all done at the other end of the link, so I
don't want the PC doing ICS or firewalling etc., just acting as a simple
bridge.)

When I select both connections and 'bridge connections' XP thinks for a
while, starts and stops the network, but then just says 'Unexpected error
while configuring the network bridge'.

I've seen KB309640 whixch is all about ICS and 3 network connections, so
doesn't fit this time.

With no other details given by XP, where do I go from here?

PC Paul wrote:
> Now I occasionally want to connect a laptop to it via the Ethernet port
> (with a crossover cable). <snip>
> With no other details given by XP, where do I go from here?

You don't mention if you have the laptop plugged in at the time of
attempting to bridge. Windows is 'clever' enough not to attempt to
bridge a connected network to an unconnected/disabled one. Plug the
laptop in and let it boot up; don't worry about DHCP, as Windows will
time out after a while and assign a useless 169.* address. Once it's in
Windows, bridge the connections on the desktop and reboot the laptop (or
you could try just renewing the DHCP lease).

That should work, although for £5 it might be an idea to invest in a
cheap desktop switch; no more messing about hotwiring networks.

--
-Gareth Halfacree
http://gareth.halfacree.co.uk

Gareth Robert Halfacree wrote:
> PC Paul wrote:
>> Now I occasionally want to connect a laptop to it via the Ethernet
>> port (with a crossover cable). <snip>
>> With no other details given by XP, where do I go from here?
>
> You don't mention if you have the laptop plugged in at the time of
> attempting to bridge. Windows is 'clever' enough not to attempt to
> bridge a connected network to an unconnected/disabled one. Plug the
> laptop in and let it boot up; don't worry about DHCP, as Windows will
> time out after a while and assign a useless 169.* address. Once it's
> in Windows, bridge the connections on the desktop and reboot the
> laptop (or you could try just renewing the DHCP lease).
>
> That should work, although for £5 it might be an idea to invest in a
> cheap desktop switch; no more messing about hotwiring networks.

The laptop was in and the network was 'connected'. DHCP etc I wasn't worried
about, I've done a lot of notworking before ;-)

It was coming up with the Unexpected Error message regardless. At one point
it did appear to make a bridge but the bridge always said 'cable unplugged'
when both interfaces were showing OK... so I deleted it again.

As for the switch, yes I was planning to put a 4 port hub on it eventually,
I just had the crossover cabl;e with me!

PC Paul wrote:
> It was coming up with the Unexpected Error message regardless. At one point
> it did appear to make a bridge but the bridge always said 'cable unplugged'
> when both interfaces were showing OK... so I deleted it again.

In that case, I'm out of ideas. I've only used the bridge functionality
once, to get a 802.11b card (back when they were state-of-the-art) to
act as an access point (too damn cheap to buy one, y'see). That just
worked as expected; point, click, blam. With the only side-effect being
Windows deciding to slow the wired interface down to the 11Mb/s of the
wireless interface.

I'm afraid the only possible response I'm left with is to bring out the
computing clichés: update Windows, install the latest drivers, delete
and recreate the network interfaces.

All of which I'm sure you've thought of and tried, but if I can't be
useful I might as well be thorough.

--
-Gareth Halfacree
http://gareth.halfacree.co.uk

Gareth Robert Halfacree wrote:
> PC Paul wrote:
>> It was coming up with the Unexpected Error message regardless. At
>> one point it did appear to make a bridge but the bridge always said
>> 'cable unplugged' when both interfaces were showing OK... so I
>> deleted it again.
>
> In that case, I'm out of ideas. I've only used the bridge
> functionality once, to get a 802.11b card (back when they were
> state-of-the-art) to act as an access point (too damn cheap to buy
> one, y'see). That just worked as expected; point, click, blam. With
> the only side-effect being Windows deciding to slow the wired
> interface down to the 11Mb/s of the wireless interface.
>
> I'm afraid the only possible response I'm left with is to bring out
> the computing clichés: update Windows, install the latest drivers,
> delete and recreate the network interfaces.
>
> All of which I'm sure you've thought of and tried, but if I can't be
> useful I might as well be thorough.

Lol thanks for that... Got the recovery CDs to hand as well ;-)

For future Googlers, I've now found these possible solutions but haven't
tried them out yet...

MS KB892892 - LogLevel entry in registry set to non-zero value
MS KB302348 - adaptor not setting promiscuous mode automatically

Also some reference to using devmgmt.msc to remove the MAC miniport adaptor