I need some help as I’m getting very irritated with what my image server is doing right now.
Here is my setup:
PC running XP SP2 with 2 drives in it (1 20GB drive for the system and 1 1.5TB drive for the images)
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DHCP Turbo 3.0 running on said PC to hand out addresses between 192.1.1.100 and 192.1.1.240
Bulletproof FTP Server 2.3.1 running on said PC to hand out files from the big 1.5TB drive
IP of said machine is hard coded to 192.1.1.254 and 255.255.0.0 subnet mask.
8 Port Workgroup Switch (Linksys EG00W8) connecting all of this together
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When I first set this up, everything worked great for many months. Then we had a new office area built for us with more shelf storage, better work benches, etc. and I had to rewire it all. Great. Worked for a few months.
About a year ago, I was no longer able to get IP addresses. Acronis True Image (what I use for imaging) would default to a 169.x.x.x address. If I set it manually to something in the range listed above, I was able to continue on and get the image or backup the PC I was working on.
I finally got fed up with having to do that and reset the switch and re-installed the apps on the PC and everything worked again for about a month.
Now, I’m trying to fix it again and nothing I do seems to be working.
I’ve tried 2 other Linksys switches (same model) and a 8-Port Netgear switch.
None of them will hand out an address, without or without DHCP Turbo running.
WTF?
I was thinking of buying a new switch, but I don’t know if that is the problem as none of the other ones I tried work, and I know for a fact that the Netgear one is relatively new.
Any recommendations? I tried googling for information of getting into that switch, but couldn’t find anything.
I’d like to think I know what I’m doing when it comes to basic office network (wired or wireless) but I’m stumped.
Is it the OS on this XP machine? I can always rebuild it, it would take me all of 40 minutes. I only have those 2 programs on it and drivers.
No, the routers and switches I’ve tried aren’t doing shit evidently since if I disable ANY and ALL capabilities of the XP machine to issue IP’s, they still won’t get an IP (I’ve plugged in two different laptops to test and neither picked up an IP). The XP “server” machine doesn’t get an IP from the router/switch if I set it to automatically detect either.
It’s worked perfectly before. Just don’t know why it doesn’t work now.
And when I set this up years ago…I honestly don’t remember why I did it this way. Is there a better way to do this? I’m up for suggestions. This is for work, so if I need to spend some $$$ to get this working better, that’s fine.
I had it setup just fine. I was able to transfer a 4GB image in 40 seconds.
I don’t like using .254 as anything, I use the reserve space before my range as static IP’d machines IE .2 - .99 (assuming .1 is the router) At work I also have a seperate machine set up as DHCP server which was just a 2k3 server machine (well VM - has since been removed)
I don’t understand … sounds like an IP conflict or something dude. Either way pick ONE and stick with. Either dedicate a server to DHCP or use the router.
So why did it work before? This is what I’m scratching my head about. I don’t remember WHY I did it this way (I’m thinking it’s because they had it set up this way when I got here)…
I think I might just go out and buy a new router. Obviously the ones here are broken or what not cause can’t log into them (tried all the common IP’s for routers and looked documentation) and they aren’t handing out IP’s (either because DHCP is disabled on them or because they are broken).
In any case if you get new routers, double check that you are buying commercial grade equipment, not easy-to-use home setups.
If you are still having problems after the new router let me know and we can come take a look at it, this is something my company specializes in. We can ensure that it is set up the right way the first time so you won’t have any issues again in the future.
Well I’d probably get one similar to what I have…which is ZyXel X-550 (it’s an advanced gaming router that’s worked without issue for years). I don’t need anything crazy that costs $300. Just need it to hand out IP’s correctly and have good transfer rates so it doesn’t take 15 minutes to get an image.
Those Linksys EG00W8’s are only switches, they are not routers. They don’t have DHCP functionality built into them. No homegrade “switch” that I know of does anything other than Layer 2, which allows PC’s and devices on the same subnet to talk to each other.
To me it sounds like there is something hosed with either the machine you run DHCP Turbo on or something wrong with that application itself. I’d either look at another application to hand out DHCP addresses or get a small cable/dsl router and use it solely for the DHCP service.
Switch is layer 2 (unless you are buying commercial grade layer 3 switches)
Router is layer 3 (which is what functions at the IP address level)
You can pm me if you want to discuss it in more detail.
I guess first thing to do would be to re-install the OS on that computer. I’ll probably just do that before I put in a PO and wait for people to approve it, etc.
Everything used to work great…so it’s definitely possible/fixable. I’m not crazy lol.
Before you do that, see if you can find another freeware DHCP app that you can try installing. If you manually code in an address and it works, but doesn’t DHCP wise, it sounds like its the server to me.
I did. I tried Tiny DHCP and Dual DHCP DNS Server from Sourceforge. Neither of them did anything to the laptop connected at the time (not through Acronis but sitting there in Windows). I did countless releases and renews to try to get an IP and it didn’t do anything. If I set the IP manually, I could then ping 192.1.1.254.
I’ll look into everything you guys mentioned. Thank you.
Also, did you buy DHCP Turbo or is it the free edition? I’m bored waiting for a maintenance window at work, but I see the free edition only supports 5 nodes. There could be an issue with the scope.
Make sure Windows Firewall is either turned off or allows DHCP Turbo to respond to requests. If you are using something other than Windows Firewall, make sure that firewall is set up correctly too.
Third thing - are there multiple network cards in the server connected to different networks? Or is this a closed lan.
maybe your ISP shut you off due to most ISP’s not allowing servers
probably just took them a while to figure out you were running a server and then cut your bandwidth?
I got the issue resolved. Thanks for the tips/help guys.
I simply rebuilt that server machine and put XP SP3 on it.
The server is now 192.1.1.5 and the range being used is 192.1.1.10-100 with a 255.255.255.0 subnet.
I turned off the firewall and made sure the two applications (DHCP Turbo and Bulletproof FTP Server) were allowed as well as port 21.
Everything works great now.
Don’t know what the hell happened to that machine or why it did that. But thank you. I now don’t have to key in an IP manually for the NIC when trying to image (which was only a 10 seconds task, but still annoying).
