When I rebooted the xp boxes could no longer talk
What do you mean by talk? Try this:
Goto box 1 and type (from a command line as stated above)
ipconfig /all Take note of the ip address and the default gateway (that should be your router's ip address)
Goto box 2 and repeat the steps for box one. Now try pinging (as mentioned in prior posts) the ip address of the first box. Do you get replies back? If so, then they can talk
Wins stands for windows internet name service (I think) and basically is a dynamic way of resolving netbios names (the computer name) to an ip address (Lmhosts file is a static mapping which does the same thing except you have to manually edit it)
If you just want to be able to access files on each system, and they can talk as mentioned above, AND I am correct in assuming that you have admin accounts on all the boxes and the password and account names are the same (phew, I got that all out in one breath) then you can just map to the hidden share on each box (all windows have a hidden administrative share, which is the drive letter with a $
shhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, don't tell anyone
)
So if you wanted to map to box 1 with an ip address of 192.168.1.1 you can right click on network neighborhood, select: map network drive, then type in the ip address (full UNC path) followed by the hidden share name or just a plain old share name:
\\192.168.1.1\c$ or just
\\192.168.1.1\sharename
Note: You can also type from a command line
net use /? to see the command line options to do the same thing
Let us know how this works out; Hope this helps some
Oh yeah, and if you are not connecting to a Novell server, then I would just get rid of IPX/SPX, there is really no need for it and it might be causing some conflicts
/JD