I have a home network (2 Ethernet cards, an 8 port hub) where one machine is running Windows 2K and the other (a laptop) Windows 98. I recently had to reformat the hard disk on the desktop and reload Windows 2K (Professional edition). Now the network is no longer working.

Since Windows Professional doesn't support DHCP server, I hard code IP addresses in. After playing around I found that if the desktop tries to ping the Laptop, it works fine. If the laptop pings the desktop it times out. Finally if the desktop tries to ping itself it also times out. If the laptop pings itself, this works fine as well.

I would think that this is a hardware issue except that it worked prior to reloading Windows 2K.

I have tried to play around with IP and subnet settings without any luck.

Thanks
Pete