OS: NT 4, NT Embedded.

Here's the situation. I have an auto-start service that's using named
pipes to communicate with another process on the same computer.
Without going into too many details, the named pipe comm fails
_sometimes_, in general when there are problems with various network
services, ultimately the result of the NIC driver not having been
installed.

My unconfirmed suspicion is that the named pipe stuff is failing
precisely because some network service or services are failing to
start, or at least failing to start quickly enough.

Can anyone tell me what services are required to be running before
LOCAL named pipes will work? And in general, can I even get named
pipes to work if there's no NIC installed?

In case you're wondering, even though the two processes are local to
the same machine, I'm using named pipes, and would like to keep using
them, because I needed a IPC mechanism that COULD function across the
network, developed my named pipe protocol for this, and then co-opted
the same protocol for the problem under discussion here.

Many thanks,
Cris

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