I am currently trying to setup a home network. The machine show green lights on both adaptors. The hardware setup is a patch cable with a crossover adaptor. The main computer is running XP home and the secondary computer 98SE. The network does not work on IPX/SPX either. Firewalls are off.

Ping Results:

Win XP Machine (192.168.0.1)

127.0.0.1 - OK
localhost - OK
192.168.0.2 - OK
192.168.0.1 - Request Timed Out

Win 98 Machine (192.168.0.2)

127.0.0.1 - OK
localhost - OK
192.168.0.2 - OK
192.168.0.1 - Request Timed Out
Just for fun, what is your subnet mask on both machines.  

It is obvious the XP home computer does not want to play.....Both computers are subnet 255.255.255.0Are these fixed addresses or are you allowing the XP machine to act as a DHCP server?Both are static IP addresses. DHCP didn't work when I tried it.Why dont you slap windows 98 on the XP computer.

or upgread the 98.

is SP2 installed?

Just to clarify that everything is correct, could you please place the output of your ipconfig /all on your XP BOX into this topic?I don't really have access to the machine but I remember the ipconfig output had the local address as ::frioh:029 or SOMETHING like that...

Changing operating systems is not an option.I have a combination of Win98 and XP systems on my home network. They always worked WELL with each other untill I installed SP2 on the XP machine.  Every few days I would have to remove the NIC from device manager and let windows redetect it and then it would work again for a while.  After doing some RESEARCH on forums like this one I swapped the NIC and the problem was solved. Apparently some realtek cards have issues with SP2. Maybe downloading the latest driver would have worked too but I didn't think to try that. Anyway, I don't know what brand NIC you have or if you have installed SP2 but I just thought I'd throw that out there.I should know better,

192.168.0.1 - Request Timed Out, means it does not know how to get there, you need to check the subnet mask, in this case class C: 255.255.255.0 and the gateway, add your main computer's ip address as gateway to itself and 192.168.0.2, it should be able to find the way back.

Know Better:

This is right from the mouth of Gates' geeks:

"Ping the IP address of the local computer to verify that the computer was correctly added to the network. If the routing table is correct, this procedure just forwards the packet to the loopback address of 127.0.0.1. To do this, type the following command: ping IP address of local host If the loopback test succeeds but you cannot ping the local IP address, there may be an issue with the routing table or with the network adapter driver."

You may check it out here:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;314067

Check the routing table and the NIC driver.

Regards,
DocInfo>>http://www.wown.com/articles_tutorials/nethood.html

type the command net in the msdos/ cmd propmt..what router are you using.........??is the isp having problems?Know Better:

You may type the route command at the command prompt (click Start > Run and type cmd and click OK).  Instructions for troubleshooting the routing table using this command are here:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/windowsserver2003/library/ServerHelp/dfc5383f-5ec0-4a0f-96da-acee2da3ac2f.mspx

Hope that helps,
DocKnow Better:

One more thing you might try is the pathping command.  From the XP DESKTOP, open the command prompt window and type pathping 192.168.0.2 and press enter, or type pathping remote host name and press enter.

If, for example, your computer names are Win98 and WinXP, you may see this:

Tracing route to win98 [192.168.0.2]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
 0  winxp.mshome.net [192.168.0.1]
 1  win98.mshome.net [192.168.0.2]

Computing statistics for 25 seconds...

In this case, pathping is more helpful ping or tracert because it shows the IP address of the local host.  If the IP address for the Windows XP computer is not 192.168.0.1, then this explains why pinging that address would not work.

If pathping fails to show the IP address of the local host then i'd recommend checking the drivers for the NIC and also trying the advice posted above by others.

Regards,
Doc