SBS 2003 connection problems

I am a small business owner (and a newbie at servers) having trouble connecting my computer nodes to my server. I have installed SBS 2003 Premium and will use my server as a file and print server and share a fractional T1 internet connection. I have installed all new cable, new server computer, new switch and run Win XP Pro on all client computers. I cannot connect any client computers to the server and the server cannot connect to the clients. I have tried to Ping the addresses from one another but no success. I can Ping successfully from client to client when connected to the switch however. DHCP is set up and I can see with an IPconfig that the address has been given and a lease from my scope range in SBS 2003 to the client machines. The error I receive is "The page cannot be displayed". I can't even get the "You are unauthorized to view this page". I occasionally receive a message telling me my NIC card has low or no connectivity, but not always. I am using 2 nic cards one for intranet and one for internet. It seems like this should be something obvious but just not to me. Any help? Thanks!

Iteachlife

Is the DHCP scope within the same subnet as the server is configured for? Sounds obvious, but if you change the servers network address, the scope on DHCP doesn't change with it, resulting in the server being unable to communicate with any clients it hands an ip address out to...

If that doesn't help, look through the servers event viewer for anything critical. Some of those error messages may shed some more light on this problem. Any error messages can either be searched for on google or preferably within the microsoft knowledgebase

Hi iteachlife,

It's a little hard for me to pinpont where the problem lies, but the fact that you cannot ping the server and the server is unable to ping the client is very strange when you consider that the pc's are getting valid IP addresses from the DHCP server. Before you go any further by trying to join the domain, browse to the server etc. you must be able to ping it. Try a few of these:

- Make sure that there are no firewall apps running on the server or client that could be stopping the traffic
- Make sure that the IP address is in the same range and that the subnet masks match.
- As mentioned in a previous post, check the logs for clues (especially anything relating to the server networking or hardware errors on the net card)

There are lots of other things to check for, but if you are confident that the PC's are getting their IP from the server, then the hardware and cabling are probably ok.

Let us know how you get on!

Mark

If you have premium 2003 run the config wizard in the management panel it will guide you to set up the 2 nic cards also make sure that you only have one dhcp server in one scope which will need to be the server the Gateway(router) can be on a different scope that is setup on the 2nd nic. Ideal setup would be one nic to external(internet) then one nic to internal (intranet) then go to a hub to break out to clients. If every cpu is on the same scope you should have no problem connecting but you will need to have the client entered into the server with its name and have the client be setup to the proper domain

Sorry for the delay. I have been out of the office this last week and a little behind. I have read your posts and I am working on the suggestions you have placed. I have some additional info I will post soon and maybe we can figure this out. Thank you for your time and effort. I will post my findings on your suggestions in the next day or so.

I am having the exact same problem as was originally posted by iteachlife.
Iteachlife, did you ever figure out how to fix the problem?