Semi Off Topic help needed<Pretty Please>

Here's the deal:

(system specifics are at the bottom)


I am attempting to establish a NEW small office LAN. I have *successfully*
peer to peer'd about 10,000,0000 WIN95 machines before this mess (ok, well
it seems like that many anyway).

On ONE NT box I initially saw all (4) workstations in network neighborhood,
but when I tried to access _any_ of the other three stations I got an error
saying: The path is invalid, can not open resource.

I figured that was because (as yet) I had not established any accounts or
users on the NT box. I closed the neighborhood, created 4 users (rights
given were the un modified "Power User" rights).

I shut down the whole network (including the hub) and restarted it. NONE of
the workstations showed up in the network neighborhood on *any* workstation
after the restart!

I figured there was something I had screwed up in NT, so I shut both of the
NT boxes down. I went to the 95 stations and they still couldn't see anyone
but themselves in the neighborhood. So I shut them down too and restarted
the hub and the two 95 boxes only.

They light the link lights on the card and the hub, but they do not see
each other in the neighborhood - still!

I dumped _everything_ relating to networking on both (95) boxed, restarted,
reloaded (Ethernet card and protocols), confirmed primary login and that
netBEUI and tcp/ip were there, as well as file and printer sharing, and
then restarted.

I swapped patch cables with some I went and borrowed from a up and running
network. No difference.

I suspected that even though the book (with the new hub) said I needed
pass-thru cables, they were lieing. I made new cross over cables (I really
have made about100,000 of those suckers - I honestly DO know how), and
didn't get link lights so I figured they were not lieing after all, and
replaced the pass-thru cables. I immediately got my link lights back.

Does ANYONE have any idea what the ^#%$ I am doing wrong or how I can fix
these *$&^ machines ??

If you have the time to give this some thought and respond I would _really_
 appreciate it - I'm stuck!

Really, this is driving me nuts. Right up until this fiasco I really
thought I knew how to network  Evil Bill's computers, now I have one
conclusion and one REALLY big mystery (the conclusion is that Windoz
created SERIOUS "negative pressure"!).



2 Brand New NT 4.0 Workstation workstations (service pack 5.0)
Network Neighborhood is on the desktop

2 Older WIN 95 stations (OSR 2.1)
Network Neighborhood is on the desktop

All have new (and working) 10/100 PCI Ethernet cards (with the mfg supplied
drivers loaded).

Hub is a NEW LinkSys 10/100 5 port unmanaged.

*All* patch cables are new and confirmed working.

*All* workstations have tcp/ip and netBEUI loaded and bound to the cards.

Primary login is: Microsoft Networks

I get link lights on all four ports of the hub, and all four cards.

Standing by,
Fuzzy
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Captain F.M. O'Lary
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