Internet Connection Sharing broken

[Guest]

[mlshiff]

We have a home network that was all Win98SE and used dialup from one desk machine as a gateway/router for other machines to access the internet.  Two of these were desk machines connected by ethernet to the router machine through the Microsoft (brand) wireless router/switch.  Two other Win98SE laptop machines used wireless access through the router.

I was using ZoneAlarm (free) firewall and Avast (free) antivirus on all machines.  Obviously, upgrades were overdue, and my wife WON a new Dell E310 desk machine that I planned to use as our new ICS gateway - and then the old ICS machine failed. 

I replaced it with the new Dell, activated ICS through the pre-installed WinXP SP2 home with pre-installed trial Macaffee security, installed the upgraded (from 98-levels) drivers, Mozilla Mail, etc.  I installed and activated Avast! with no problems.  I could access shared files from any machine on any other machine on my local network.  But Zone labs no longer supported ZA for Win98, so I could not upgrade it, and I looked for replacements. 

I came across Comodo firewall as a possible replacement for ZoneAlarm.  It was described as supporting ICS directly, a distinct advantage for my circumstances.  So I downloaded and installed it on the new machine, and can no longer access the new machine - or the internet - from any of the networked machines.  The new machine can still access local network files and devices. 

I have searched the Q&A sections for a couple of hours, but have not found what I need to restore network access.  I cannot install Comodo Firewall on any of the other machines, so the general instructions I have found don't help me.  I suspect that a New ZoneAlarm on this gateway machine might fix my problems, but I thought I would try you first.

*********************

New information - after installing 52 Microsoft fixes that I downloaded overnight, and rebooting all of the computers AND the router/switch, I found that I can access the shared file from one of the ethernet attached computers, aalthough neither IE nor Mozilla can find the internet.  The laptop still cannot see the new machine at all, although it can see the ethernet attached win98 machine

[mlshiff]

 

Eureka!  The problem with the Win98 clients was the same for all but one of them; the client computers MUST use WINS resolution - BROADCAST will NOT work!  Microsoft Knowlegebase article KB142042 describes what are SUPPOSED to be the default client node types, but all of my Win98 machines were defined the same so their rule is not iron clad.  I inserted the key and value they describe and all the clients started working immediately. 

Perhaps Comodo ought to consider adding some kind of workaround for this problem. 

[Little Mac]

Wait a doggone minute, mlshiff!  You can't just come on the forums with questions and then go doing research and solving your own problems! 

Hey, welcome to the forums!   

I was just about to tell you to do just what you did (no I wasn't!)...

All joking aside, I'm glad you resolved that.  You can be confident that the by posting here, Comodo will see your situation.  If you want to make absolutely, positively sure that they know about it, you can add a request to the Wishlist, here:  http://forums.comodo.com/index.php/topic,4612.0.html.

There's a goldmine of info here in the forums, if you're willing to dig (search) a little.  If you have not already done so, go here, and follow Paulo's links to various FAQs.  If you have questions for which you cannot find answers, or feel like you need clarification on something, don't be afraid to ask.  Someone will be glad to help you.  Heck, you may even help yourself and save us all the effort! 

LM

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