Network error - "No more connections..."

Hi folks:

I am having a nasty problem with a windows 98 peer to peer network set up. There are 4 systems on the network. The number one system was runs custom backup software which backs up files from the other systems. The installation has worked perfectly for 5 years. Recently the number one system suffered a hard drive failure. The system drive was restored from the backups and everything works fine with one exception. The backup software is unable to backup files from the number three system. The software is returning an 'access denied" error on each file it attempts to access. When the backup software is running, if an attempt is made to connect to the number three system from any of the other systems (via network neighborhood) the following error results ""No more connections can be made to this remote computer because there are already as many connections as the computer can accept."

The backup software works perfectly with all the other systems on the network - as it had before. Normal network connections to access files via network neighborhood seem to work normally with the number three system, it is only the backup software which is affected. The backup software is using windows API networking calls at the low level to make connections and to access files for purposes of backing them up. The backup software has been reinstalled - this did not help. A complete new system drive was built for the number one system and the backup software loaded on it - all systems function normally EXCEPT the number three system which continues to issue the access denied error to the backup software.

I have tried uninstalling the networking protocols and then reinstalling them, all to no avail - the problem persists. norton antivirus and firewall security products were uninstalled as well - this did not help. (The backup system co-existed peacefully with the norton products for a number of years.)

Protocols being used are TCP/IP, NetBEUI and IPX/SPX.

Any assistance anyone can offer would be greatly appreciated as this has become a major inconvenience. Most references to the error message I noted above which I have found on the internet are with respect to Windows NT systems or server systems. Only Windows 98 systems are involved in this set up.

I can be reached via email at d.melnyk@sympatico.ca


Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

Best regards, Dave Melnyk

You never mention if you can access pc3 from the backup server? Sounds to me that your focus has been on the backup server but not the workstation. I would make sure the account being used on the server exists on the problem workstation with the same password. I would test to see if networking was working between the two and if you could access files from and to either.

Access denied points to a rights/access issue on pc3

Wanderer2:

Thanks for the reply.

The network is all windows 98 peer to peer with share level security (not user level) The system runing the backup software can access PC3 and vice versa normally. It is only the backup software which is using Windows API calls to "make a connection" to PC3 which is getting the error.

I believe it is because the back up softare is making and disconnecting the connection to the other system on a few occaissions (ie. it conects to the PC - reads the drive information, then disconnects the network connection while other drives are read. THen when processing starts it reconnects to the PC3 - however this was never a problem before. I think that at the time the backup server pc crashed initially it was connected to PC3. Even reading the list of fils on the rive seems to result in some error - after reading several directories, the OCX doing the read routine is getting an error - the same one I believe - No more conections. This is a very frustrating problem, needless to say, but seems to be something on PC3 with respect to network settings.