A short-lived victory
Well, the machines WERE all talking to each other. After finally getting everything working seamlessly last week, the laptop has now decided to ignore the other computers completely. The three desktop systems are still playing nice, so I know it isn’t the network - it’s the laptop.
The laptop is a Dell Inspiron 5150. Since I had just wiped the hard drive and did a fresh install of Windows XP, I thought it may be a driver issue. So, I went to Dell’s support site and downloaded any updated drivers for the hardware on the system. That didn’t solve the problem.
Reading several more online forums has shown a common problem may be the network drivers or settings becoming corrupt. As this is a fresh install, I doubted that was the problem, but I uninstalled and reinstalled my network devices anyhow. Still no luck.
I’m still waiting on the myriad service packs and software updates to complete from Microsoft Update. Until those are finished, I’ll wait and hope that one of those updates magically restores my network connections.
I can now more fully appreciate Angela Parker’s Outlook BCM troubles. And, like her, I haven’t quit… it’s just taking me MUCH longer than I’d wanted.
