Help - Getting Work Laptop to Connect to Home Network

[Garrett Sinclair]

Any and all suggestions are appreciated.

At the end of the day, I am hoping to be able to use file and printer
sharing with my work laptop and my home network PCs. I already have
figured out getting wireless internet up and going, so that is not an
issue. (Note: I have a DSL modem and a wireless internet router
connecting 3 PCs total - 2 home and 1 work laptop.)

My work laptop domain name is MRC and it is running XP Pro. I have
already set my home networked PCs to have each have a workgroup name
of MRC and these "home PCs" are running XP Home.

The 2 home PCs are running print and file sharing perfectly in the
"Shared Folders" area of "My Network Places" - but they are not
"viewable" to each other when I click on "View Workgroup Computers."

I am able to "ping" the home PCs to my work laptop and vice versa
(using the ping command) and that works perfectly. So I know the
computers can "see" each other over the home network.

What is NOT working is that the when I click my way through Network
Neighborhood on my work laptop and get to the MRC domain and double
click it - nothing happens and eventually I get some sort of error
message. I also hit a dead end when I try to find the printer
connecting to one of my home PCs (though the other home PC can find it
easily.)

I do not have permission to reset my work laptop to a "workgroup mode"
and then reset it to a domain mode later. I must live with the domain
name (MRC) they have given me.

Any ideas on how I can fix this?

 

[Luke]

Hi Garrett,
With regards to getting your two PC's sharing properly please try the
following on both PC's:
Can you just check whether the LAN connections on the computers are
bridged (on both computers);
1. Open network connections
2. Check whether there is a network connection that is shown as a
bridge icon.
3. I there is then disable it and then delete it.
If that doesn't work then please try the following:
Check to see if Simple File Sharing (Control Panel - Folder Options -
View - Advanced settings) is enabled or disabled.
For XP Home with Simple File Sharing enabled, make sure that the Guest
account is enabled, thru Local User Manager (Start - Run -
"lusrmgr.msc"), on each computer. Do any of the computers have a
software firewall (ICF or third party)? If so, you need to configure
them for file sharing, by opening ports TCP 139, 445 and UDP 137, 138,
445, and / or by identifying the other computers as present in the
Local (Trusted) zone. Firewall configurations are a very common cause
of (network) browser, and file sharing, problems.
Let me know if the problem still exists, Luke

 

[Doug Sherman [MVP]]

On the laptop, right click My Computer and select Manage. Expand Local
Users and Groups and click on Users. See if there is a Local User account
which you know the password for. If not, you may be able to create one and
add it to the Administrators group.

If you have a local user account, reboot and at the logon screen log onto
the local machione (this computer) instead of the domain. If you do not see
this option, click on the Options button. You may have to enable the Guest
account on the XP Pro machine to share files with the XP Home machines.

Doug Sherman
MCSE Win2k/NT4.0, MCSA, MCP+I, MVP

 

[Garrett Sinclair]

OK.

On my work laptop, I created a user ("homeuser") in the
Administrator's group with a local machine login (not via the domain.)
I also enabled my guest account.

I can surf the internet fine and can use the command line to "ping"
other PCs on my home network (like before) - but I still cannot "see"
the other PCs in my network places - entire network - microsoft
windows network - "MRC" workgroup area.

Any other ideas?

 

[Doug Sherman [MVP]]

Change the name of your home network workgroup to the NetBIOS name of your
work domain (NetBIOS name of mydomain.com = mydomain).

Doug Sherman
MCSE Win2k/NT4.0, MCSA, MCP+I, MVP