During reboots Win 2000 desktop box is not visible on network unless I log into it

December 30, 2008 9:45 PM

I have a few Windows 2000 desktop boxes on my home network. One of them has been having a problem for sometime where after it reboots, I need to log into the box for it to be visible on the network. Otherwise pings from other machines keep failing.

I usually log in using the Administrator account. All of my windows boxes are pretty musch same config having ZoneAlarm firewall, AVG antivirus, spybot, spywareblaster. I am wondering how should I try to figure out where the problem is. I have seen netbt 4319 errors in event log, which is about being another machine on the network same name. BUt I have tried shutting down all machines except my XP laptop which does not have same name at all and the main network problem i described earlier still persists. Any pointers would be very appreciated.

posted by flyby22 to computers & internet (5 comments total)

My Windows admin experience is limited so please double check on these suggestions...

So you have two issues then, 1) duplicate name on network 2) system doesn't respond to ping.

As for 1) - Win has the concept of two names, a hostname and netbios name. There's a discussion of something very similar to your issue here - NetBT 4319 error

As for 2) - Keep in mind a few things - ping by name, ping by number (ipaddr) - know that ping is ICMP by default - some pings offer alternate protocol - is the firewall filtering this?

I'm confident you'll find a solution to this in short order. Please post here and / or mark fave comment.
posted by ezekieldas at 6:17 AM on December 31, 2008

Sounds like zone alarm (or something) is running a service that works at login. I would remove zone alarm and see if that clears it up.

If it continues try using a static IP instead of DHCP. Also what kind of network card is in there? Wired or wireless? Many wireless implementations wont connect until after login.
posted by damn dirty ape at 6:58 AM on December 31, 2008

For a quick fix to have the machine log in automatically, you can use the 'control userpasswords2' command. Type it into the Run field, and follow the directions on this page:

http://wiki.ljackson.us/Control_Userpasswords2
posted by Jim T at 10:55 AM on December 31, 2008

I have a realtek gigabit lan card on the box. I also have the original card which I have disabled. This machine is set up with fixed IP addr and I have tried pinging with IP addr.

Yeah I am thinking of uninstalling ZA first and then AVG to see if that helps.

I wish I could remember when it started happening. This problem developed sometime more recent. I have had ZA and AVG on it for a long time.

Thanks for the automatic login suggestion. Will try that till I can figure out what is going on.
posted by flyby22 at 12:29 PM on December 31, 2008

Ok it seems Zone Alarm was the culprit. I uninstalled it and it is now working. I guess I will not renew my ZA subscription this year after all. It has been bugging me to do so. I have seen lot of people complaining about ZA. I guess it is time to try something else.

I did not change any ZA settings for a very long time and last night when I checked in ZA console last night I could not spot anything obvious that would be causing this behavior.
posted by flyby22 at 1:07 PM on December 31, 2008