windows xp - can see MAC address but can't ping

[kw]

I have 2 PC's with ASUS P4P8X motherboards with onboard
3Com 3C940 NIC's running a small pee-to-peer network via
a 3Com Office Connect 10/100 switch. There is a 3Com
utility installed, 3Com NIC Doctor, which will run
diagnostics. Via this I can see remote PC's MAC addresses
but I cannoy get TCP/IP to work ie I cannot ping and
Windows Xp tells me I have no permission to browse the
workgroup.

I have installed the lastes driver from ASUS for the
3C940 NIC and I have tried setting the NIC's to 100 Half
and even 10 Half to no avail.

I am using fixed IP addresses.
Any ideas where I am going wrong? Or maybe an idea of
what I should check?

thanks
kw

[Phil Lyons]

More information ... ?

What are the IP addresses of both workstations and net masks?

Can you "nbtstat -A peer_host_IP" ? Does it return anything?

Can the hosts ping themselves?

Do both hosts fail to ping, or just one of the two?

Regards,
Phil

"kw" > wrote in message >...
> I have 2 PC's with ASUS P4P8X motherboards with onboard
> 3Com 3C940 NIC's running a small pee-to-peer network via
> a 3Com Office Connect 10/100 switch. There is a 3Com
> utility installed, 3Com NIC Doctor, which will run
> diagnostics. Via this I can see remote PC's MAC addresses
> but I cannoy get TCP/IP to work ie I cannot ping and
> Windows Xp tells me I have no permission to browse the
> workgroup.
>
> I have installed the lastes driver from ASUS for the
> 3C940 NIC and I have tried setting the NIC's to 100 Half
> and even 10 Half to no avail.
>
> I am using fixed IP addresses.
> Any ideas where I am going wrong? Or maybe an idea of
> what I should check?
>
> thanks
> kw