good luck w/that, just for curiousity, i'll keep trying to find a reason this isn't working. if the debian works ok i'd like to know, you can email me if you like. once again, sorry, and good luck w/all your endeavors. ;-)

Could it have been because the hostname was floods[box] and it isn't able to use []'s..? I don't know for sure, and it's too late now since I just installed Debian. ack

i would think that the hostname could cause problems w/dns, but not w/a basic ping to an address. got debian installed? that was quick, any luck so far?

Installing base system right now. It's on a NICE machine. AMD1800XP+ with 512MB RAM and an MSI KT4 Ultra Motherboard, with a GF4 MMX Video Card. Badass

cool keep me up to date, i'm not going anywhere. i'm usually here every evening.

I installed Debian and it didn't work either, so I'm reinstalling slack. I wasn't positive about the Debian installation, though.

Now, I'm at the slack kernel selection, and I'm unsure which one to use. Last time, I used bare.i/bzImage and it seemed to be alright, but could this have been stopping the network from running maybe..?

i really don't think kernel selection was the problem. the nic was up and braodcasting throughout the process. the only thing i can think of is maybe there are some compatiblity issues w/a usb connection, i'm researching that idea.just so you can have a look here are the availabe kernels.

http://www.slackware.com/install/bootdisk.php

Another way to attack this: Do you happen to have Norton's connection sharing avaliable as part of your bundle? Or is it just the firewall that is extra? If so, almost anything is supposed to be a better solution than ICS (but its free - that's what I used on my dialup connection so I could use the proprietary call waiting software). I am gonna see about this topic on practicallynetworked and see what may be a factor in holding you back.

About that, I do have Nortons Networking Firewall type thing, though I set a rule in the config to allow all IPs with 192.168.0.0 through 192.168.0.255, I don't know if something is wrong there or not. I don't think it's a problem with the settings on the network, since all of them have been recommended and re-recommended, and I knew enough about networking to be able to set one up.

I don't know if it would be trouble with a USB connection, I know people on a satellite forum (http://www.dslreports.com/forum/sat) that are running linux clients on a WinXP ICS host machine, but none of them offered any help. The trouble, I think, is narrowed down to the WinXP host, but I don't know, since the other XP client could access the net and browse files on the XP hosts shared folders.. It's just weird..! Thanks for a list of those kernels and their differences, I had been looking for that but wasn't able to find it on slackware's site, or on a search of google

maky you life easer x50
http://www.linksys.com/products/prod...id=29&prid=561

That's the model I got. It works quite well. I don't know if the sattelite software would work through the router (or if it has an ethernet connection).

glad your back vectordrake, i spent half the day going back through these posts , and quite frankly, i'm "without". have you got any fresh ideas? i'm about ready to email one of the networking mods, to see if they could shed some light.

I've gotta do a bit more reading. I haven't had any networking problems like this lately, so I'm not so sharp right now.

aye, i'm reading as well. good luck to the three of us.

I know it isn't the switch, since it works when the XP boxes are hooked up. It's just a CNet 8 port switch. If I were to buy a router I'd just have to turn off DHCP and practically turn it into a switch, so I'd just be spending more money, and right now that is one thing that lacks.

Satellite has no ethernet connection, it's through USB. So I have to do it all crazy like.. They just made new model modems that do use ethernet, but I really don't want one. You can't tweak it, so the speed you get is just that, the speed you'll get. With this modem I can make it go 3x as fast as anyone on the newer models.

Going to try out some more random stuff on the slack box and hope it works..

If any ideas come, don't hesitate!
Thanks x10 for all the help guys.