Wondered if anyone can help,which key do you press when restarting PC to go into safe mode. Need to do some housekeeping.

F8

Thanks MM. That makes sorting out the other suggestions a lot easier. The one thing I'm unsure of now is how to find out the MAC addresses of my machines. No doubt there's a simple way but please enlighten me. Searches in Windows throw up horrible things like DOS commands which I won't touch :)

The network devices usually have the MAC addresses on a sticker at the back or underneath, otherwise you usually have to run a DOS command Windows key+R then 'cmd' to open a DOS window.

Thanks Haystack

The table's arrived and it's pink, Doc. It's the new black.

:o)

Anyway, we're struggling with the set up and can't get the first network printer that we've tried to work. We've assigned it a manual IP address (the next number on from the PC's already on the network) and have assigned the correct IP address for the router on the printer menu screen, but when we try to "Add printer" it just isn't being detected.

The relevant light is flashing on the ethernet switch which implies that the network card and cabling is OK.

Presumably we should also be able to see the device in the router homepage????? Because we can't!

Not sure what to try next.

Hil, it sometimes takes a few minutes for devices to appear. Otherwise try adding it by name rather than searching for it. Unsure whether your switch has a device name but try things like

\\IP address\printername
\\devicename\printername

e.g. \\192.168.2.23\printer1
or \\switch\printer1

Presumably when you set up the switch you gave the printer a name.

Don't use the internet/intranet option since that is different.

BTW how are you setting the IP address for the switch?? You would need to talk to the switch via the browser I would think, which you can't do if you haven't given it an IP address yet! I would think it asks the network to allocate it an address.

Off for the day but someone else will help no doubt.

K,

Thanks. I've done nothing about setting an IP address for the switch and the switch doesn't show on the list of attached devices on the router homepage.

I'm confidant(???) that it's working, however, as I've taken 2 PC's off the gateway and put them onto the switch and have plugged the printer directly into the gateway.

I've not given the printer a name. How do I do that or find it's name? The documentation doesn't say anything about naming it.

Ok I think I may have misunderstood things slightly. Could you confirm that the printers are internet ready, i.e. have an internet socket and a built-in print server? In which case you will be setting the IP address and printer name directly on the printer whether via a control panel or a browser or telnet program. Ideally though the printer would use DHCP to get an IP address from the main router rather than you selecting it, but a printer name still has to be set up on it.

I suspect that apart from that your problem might be that the new switch is also acting as DHCP server, i.e. you have two networks rather than one. If that is true you need to disable the DHCP server on the new switch. What model switch have you got? How have you configured it?

i

Bones:

Don't bother with all that stuff. Login to your router, with the wireless laptop turned on and connected to the network.

Click on "Wireless Settings"

Third down in the middle window you will see

Wireless Station Access List [Setup Access List]

Click [Setup Access List]

You will see a table of the MAC addresses of Available connected devices, one of which will be your laptop (hopefully, the only one). At the top of the page, check the box marked "Turn Access Control On".

Then click "Add" for each device you wish to allow to access your router. You can even pick your own Device names for them.

Once you've done this, we can worry about encryption. Access restriction is the important bit, IMHO.

K,

The gateway/router is a Netgear DG814 and the switch is a FS605. The printer is a Minolta colour laser with built in print server and RJ45 socket.

When the switch was connected to the router there was nothing to see or do - it just worked straight away. We're sure that it is working as 2 of the PC's are wired into it and they both work fine. Also the printer is wired straight into the gateway.

The router homepage is xxx.xxx.0.1

The 4 PC's have been automatically assigned as

xxx.xxx.0.2
xxx.xxx.0.3
xxx.xxx.0.5
and
xxx.xxx.0.6

Nothing else is being detected on the router homepage.

I don't know why nothing seems to be assigned to xxx.xxx.0.4 and wondered if this might be assigned either to the switch or the printer.

Using the menu on the printer, the IP address xxx.xxx.0.7 has been assigned to the printer. There isn't an option (that I can see) to assign a name to the printer although it does have something called a HW Address which consists of alphanumeric characters.

We've tried searching for the printer on the network using the HW Address as a name but to no avail.

The printer does have a homepage but it needs to be connected to access it.

I guess that one option would be to connect via the parallel port to access it.

Can't think of anything else to try.

MM - thank you. There was just the one device detected and that is now a trusted source with Access Control switched on.

hilary, does typing

http://xxx.xxx.0.7/

into a browser get you anything?

Otherwise try opening a DOS box and typing

ping xxx.xxx.0.7

and also ping xxx.xxx.0.4

You're right in that there is nothing to set on the switch. Some switches are actually routers and need IP addresses set etc., this one is a simple switch and should not be taking up an IP address.

Hilary hardware address = MAC address, not that this helps with what your doing...

Hil,

Maybe I should come over to your gaff and sort it out -- I could bring your ski boots ;-)

MM,

I thought you'd never offer.

:o)

K,

Typing http://xxx.xxx.0.7/ in a browser did the trick in so far as it gets us into the printer web page which is obviously a start.

The problem remains though that we still can't use "Add Printer" through Windows (which is XP Pro incidentally). We click the button for "a network printer" and it then gives us 3 options. "Browsing for a printer" doesn't detect it and the other 2 options both require a name which we don't seem to have.

Hilary, I looked up one of the Konica printers, although perhaps not your model, and it seems that it could do DHCP, which means that it will ask your router for an address. It might be that both are happening at the moment, i.e. the router is allocating an address and the printer is also receiving the address you set, so that it is getting confused. Try disabling the IP setting on the printer, e.g. set to 0.0.0.0, and also look around the other settings to see if DHCP is enabled on the printer. It's better anyway if the router allocates all the addresses.

How did you get the printer to work by connecting the PCs directly to the switch if you didn't have a printer name? Was it found automatically? If so you will have the name!

Hilary your printer should come with a CD with an install package on it. This ought to search for the network printer and then give you options to change the ip address and dhcp etc.

Edit - Just run the CD on your server or on one of your XP machines.

My laptop has a single 60Gb hard disc but this came partitioned in two, one of 29 Gb and one (D:\) around 20 Gb. Everything is saved on the C partition, but am I safe to store other stuff on D? I keep backups of my three work sites on the laptop and would like to keep it all there rather than clog up C which is getting quite full.