I'm running a home network with 5 PCs. 4 of the PCs are running XP Home and 1 (an IBM T40P) is running XP Pro. I can ping the 4 XP Home computers from the IBM but I cannot ping the IBM from ANY of the other computers. This problem developed only within the last week or so. I am running DHCP on the home network (using a NETGEAR router). The IP address for the IBM is properly assigned by the router. Also, during a bootup of the IBM, there is a window of time between entering the user password and the desktop being booted where pings actually DO WORK, but once the desktop boots completely, I can no longer ping the IBM.

In article <3FB5F1B4-4215-4361-80BB-(E-Mail Removed)>, mpd
<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>I'm running a home network with 5 PCs. 4 of the PCs are running XP Home and 1 (an IBM T40P) is running XP Pro. I can ping the 4 XP Home computers from the IBM but I cannot ping the IBM from ANY of the other computers. This problem developed only within the last week or so. I am running DHCP on the home network (using a NETGEAR router). The IP address for the IBM is properly assigned by the router. Also, during a bootup of the IBM, there is a window of time between entering the user password and the desktop being booted where pings actually DO WORK, but once the desktop boots completely, I can no longer ping the IBM.

All the signs point to a firewall program running on the IBM. If it's
not properly configured, it can block access from the other computers.
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I had the same thought. The XP firewall is disabled (and has never been activated). I have Norton Internet Security 2004 on the machine but it is also completely disabled. In addition, because I suspected the firewall, I totally uninstalled it, with no effect. Is it possible that there is no way to do a completely clean uninstall of the Norton firewall program

Also, I should say that for a 2 week period after installing the firewall program, everything ran fine until, I think, a recent Microsoft patch that I downloaded from the Microsoft site...

Thanks for your help!

PS: If I send a ping from the IBM with the IP of the IBM itself, the IBM does reply. It is only a ping from the other machines on the network that do not reply...