Main PC does not mount networked drive

[mpegjohn]

Hi,
I have just subscribed to Sky broadband.
I have a blck netgear router, cabled to a switch. also connected to the switch is my PC, a network drive, and a linux box.
In the past I have had fixed IP addresses for all the boxes on the network and all has been OK.
Now I switched on the automatic IP allocation on my PC, which works, and my network drive.
I can load the config web page from the hard drive on my PC, using the address that I know the drive has been given.
However I can't locate it on the network using windows, and I can't mount it as a drive.
Any ideas what is going on please.

Regards,
John.

[Isitme]

It may have been easier if you had stuck to allocated adresses and simply changed them to suit the router.

I also had problems with a network drive and in the end gave it it's own address. I gave it the top address in the range ie 192.168.0.254 and made the top address in the server range ......253. This worked for me, but I do not use a switch, as there are enough ports on the router for my needs. I can see the point of a switch with a single port router, but do you really need it with 4 available on the router?

[mpegjohn]

Thanks for the response.
The reason I use a switch is that the router is some distance from the main PC, and I ony want 1 lan cable running to it.
The other reason is that I like the flashing lights......
I will try your suggestion of going back to fixed IP's.
How do I make the router cope with this?

Regards,
John

[PaulSky]

Just assign IP addresses to each PC and make sure you do not use 192.168.0.1 for any of the PCs, asign a 192.168.0.X ip address to each PC, asign the router IP as the default gateway/ DNS ip and see what happens.

[Isitme]

You don't really need to assign the router as the DNS server, in fact many find that using the OpenDNS server addresses give better results than using the default Sky addresses. These are

Preferred 208.67.222.222
Alternate 208.67.220.220