Returning to your first post....

> I have firebird 1.5 RC5 on an XPPro machine.
> The network is P2P, DHCP, LinkSys type router/switch

On the internal network, the "router" part of your LinkSys is not used.

> the clients on the network are one W2K, two XPPros, and 3 Win98s.

(snip)

> I'm pulling my hair out over this and if you saw a picture, you would
> know I can't afford to pull any more hair out. (I'm nearly bald!!
> <G>)

One thing that should help is to pull another persons hair out. :-)

Reserve your server address in SysLink. Give him a dedicated IP, and set is
gateway address to SysLink address.

Edit hosts files in Win machines. Take care about the name of this file -
you should rename "hosts.sam" to "hosts". Create a line in hosts files with
your server address, something like:

192.168.1.2 MyServer

In your connection string, use MyServer:PathToDatabase instead of your IP
address.

This is the answer 'by the book', and it should work. But with M$ OS'es, you
should take a look around and see if you have a coleague with a nice hair to
be pulled. :-)

Artur