Windows

Is the printer shared with a password? If so, you need to specify the password like so: "net use lpt1 \\computer\printer password /persistent:yes"

lots of network traffice from the win98 box? you've eliminated spyware/worms as possible on win98 box, yes?
did you try locking nic media type to 10mb half duplex. does logging out and back in recover the printer?

must be same domain xp and win98 workstation
and you must config, win98 dns and workgroup
sorry my tarzan english

There is no password on the printer.
Yes, if I log the user off and back on, the printer will again work.
When logging on the printer seems to stay connected for about 10 to 30 minutes, before showing that "printer not found on server, unable to connect"

I tried the following, I made the user an admin for the local XP machine. I renamed the Win98 system to eight character name ( Dellship) in case long name was a problem. I then reshared the printer on the win98 system.

ON the XP system I deleted the printer I added and started over.
This time, could not see the computer name, so I shared it as follows

\\10.1.1.209\reneprt

It seems to take a long time to see it, but does, and shows up as a LanManager printer.

I can print a test page, and print documents. and then voila same problem,

"printer not found on server, unable to connect"

This is driving me crazy, I have never had such a problem sharing a workstation printer before.

HELP!!!!!

Point value changed by question poster.

Umm, I tried to see if I could see the win98 system in network neighbourhood from the WinXP system, and I cant.

For the life of me I can figure out how I can logon work fine for 30 minutes, and then this happens. Could the Win2000 server be causing this? I have not set any group policies. In fact as only a few users, I have not even set up groups, just using out of the box settings.

Point value changed by question poster.

humm you sure this computer belongs to the domain? If this a Small Business Server 2003 domain?

Ran into a similar problem on a SBS 2003 domain in which an XP machine would connect for a period of time then disconnect. This was due to the computer not being a member of the domain [the user had an account on the domain]. we disjoined and rejoined the computer, all was well. You might want to disjoin the W9X box and rejoin it to the domain.

Assume you are running a WINS server for the W9X machines can you resolve and see the W9X machine?

CGIT

Thanks for the tips, the server is a windows2000 domain server with AD. I have never had to "join" a computer to a domain, I simply have added workstations wether win98/w2k pro/XP Pro, assign a user account, make a logon script, and eveything always worked fine.

To be honest, I am not sure if I am running WINS, but am running netbios over tcp, and never had a problem like this before. In this case, I have all workstations with a workgroup name same as domain name, as they use both the server and peer to peer.