[Network Security]

Hi folk. It's been ages since I've been here.

I'm moderately knowlegeble about computers in general but never studied networking until now.

I've set up a LAN with 3 computers (2 on ethernet and 1 wireless) all connected to a router. All three are sharing the internet connection and all three are sharing some files and folders and one printer.

Router: 2 wire 2700HG with a hardware firewall. It's managing the whole network with dynamic IP allocations with a single workgroup name for all three (no bridging neccessary if I understand it correctly)

Computer 1:

Windows XP home w/ Zonealarm Pro, Ad Aware, Spyware blaster, Spybot, and McAfee AV.

Ethernet connection sharing music and videos

Computer 2:

Windows XP home w/ Ad Aware, Spyware blaster, spybot, and McAfee AV. (only XP's crappy firewall)

Wireless connection using WEP and Sharing music and a printer.

Will soon have a second internet connection through an ethernet cable modem and am interested in sharing this connection with the other two computers too.

Computer 3:

Windows 98se (just got it up and running, no security installed yet) Only a 200MHz pentium w/32Meg of ram and a 2GB HD. Certainly not something one would want to throw XP onto.

Just serving up music from the other two computers for my stereo to play, sharing nothing

Right now, I am using IP protocols for the whole LAN.

I've been reading about how easily hacked IP LANs are and am interested in a discussion on how people here would secure such a network from hacking. I'm interested in alternate protocols and firewall settings as well as a general discussion on network security in general.

So how about some recommendations...

[Laptop Problems]

Let me make sure I have this straight. You had trouble formatting the drive. But once you succeeded and installed windows clean, the ntoskrnl.exe file came up corrupt on the first boot.

This sounds to me like a hardware problem. Probaby the hard drive and possibly the controller.

If you have problems doing a repair install and with clean installing with another (non ntfs) version of windows, then you should start looking at replacing the drive.

Hope I helped.

[External Hard Drive Problems]

You did not specify what OS you are using. But this sounds like a driver problem. Sometimes the driver file gets corrupted. If you have windows, it could be a registry problem. Either case, uninstalling and reinstalling the drivers should take care of the problem.

Hello all:

I have a hard-drive MP3 player that I currently use as an external hard drive. It's plugged into my PC via USB. It's worked fine doing that for a while now. But recently (within the past few days or so), the drive gives me a Blue Screen of Death saying something to the effect of Cannot Write to H: Drive. It still has plenty of hard drive space. So that's not the problem. I'm not sure what it could be. Also, when I load up mp3 files from the drive, which is the function of the drive, they load up slow in Winamp. Any ideas?

Thanks,

Ryan.