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The local area network issue

My home network has my development servers on it. One is an antique Windows 2000 server which is currently out of commission for bad memory, and the other is a Ubuntu Linux workstation tweaked to run SAMBA, PHP, MySQL etc. Used to be any machine on the LAN could open up Windows Explorer (or Ubuntu’s Places) and surf to another machine: My Network Places -> Entire Network -> Microsoft Windows Network -> Workgroup and then see all the machines on the network and browse to a shared folder. Now I get an error message:

Workgroup is not accessible. You might not have permission to use this network resource. Contact the administrator of this server to find out if you have access permissions.

The list of server for this workgroup is not currently available.

And from Linux (Places->Network->Windows Network):

Unable to mount location

Failed to retrieve share list from server

It’s conceivable that the Windows 2000 server was acting as a domain controller but the LAN is setup on workgroups not domains. Let’s assume the source of this problem is the now semi-retired Windows 2000 server. My home router is a D-LINK DIR-615. So the challenge is to get either the router or the Linux box to fill whatever role the Windows 2000 server used to perform to make my network browseable. Please note that if I refer to the machines specifically, I can still work with files from that machine. So \\mickymouse\familypics would still allow the family pictures to be seen all over the house. The problem is the same for printer sharing. I cannot browse to a shared printer but if I know the \\machinename\sharename I can setup a remote machine to print to the shared printer.

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Overwhelmed by broken things

These past few weeks have not been good from the hardware side of things. My phone is on its way out but Sarah’s phone died an odd death. She jumps to the front of the new phone line which I think puts her on her 2nd upgrade before Cathy or I have had a single upgrade. My new 500 GB hard drive lasted one day and I’m so torn up over it I’m ignoring it so when I finally get around to looking at it (today) I fully expect NewEgg to give me a hard way to go on issuing a refund. I will never buy a hard drive that isn’t Seagate again! The van battery died without warning. Something is wrong with the hvac. The list goes on.

Today I turn the tide! I’m stepping into my phone booth and mild mannered lethargic depression man is going to turn into super manic Mr. Fix-it! Maybe I’ll even make some vidcasts.

Update: drive appears to work in a different computer. That leaves the problem as an ide controller or cable problem on the primary machine.

Update: Problem resolved. The ide cable had accidentally been pulled loose when I was fooling around inside the case. Oops.