Previously, I had two computers hooked up, with the fastest one (running Win2k) acting as the host, and a win98 machine acting as a guest over a TCP/IP ethernet network. I had a new, faster computer donated (this is our reservation system for a Little Theatre) so I decided to use it as the host and the other two as guests.

The newest computer is an 850 Mhz Duron processor running Windows ME. Once I got the Windows networking functional, I tried opening the database over the network using the Filemaker "hosts", but could only get the Win98 machine to work. The Win2k machine does not "see" the new computer's files as openable when using Filemaker's Open command.

I've got the file set to multi-user, and set up a group with all three machines given permission to open the file.

Am I missing something elementary here? Any help would be appreciated...we open our first play Friday!

In Filemaker on the Win 2000 machine have you tried Hosts > specify host > enter ip address of PC that is hosting the Filemaker databases?

Will

Yes, I did with no success.

Seems obvious, but is FM running and are the files open on the host machine. Also is networking set to TCP/IP in FM preferences on both the host and client copies of FM?

-bd

Can you ping the host from the Win 2K PC and vice-versa?

Is zone alarm or anything similar running on the W2K PC?

Have you tried reinstalling FileMaker on the W2K PC?

Solved the problem by adding dummy DNS numbers...apparently MS network didn't have any problem with two computers, but with three...it wanted some unique identifier.

Anyway, we got it working, despite our lack of networking knowledge, and it's doing exactly what it is supposed to.

Thanks to everyone who offered solutions...this forum has been a big help to me with several FM problems regarding this project.