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