Networking XP Boxes over a wireless LAN

[Kris Britton]

I have a Windows XP Pro box and a Windows XP Home box
connected to a Linksys Wireless Router. The router is
connected to the internet. Both computers talk fine to
the internet directly through the router. However I am
having difficulty getting them to talk to one another
fully.

On the XP Home machine I do have MaCafee's Personal
Firewall executing. However for the following ping tests
I disabled the firewall.

Ping test/results:

From the XP Home machine:
a) ping loopback -- success
b) ping local -- success
c) ping router -- success
d) ping XP Pro -- success

From the XP Pro machine:
a) ping loopback -- success
b) ping local -- success
c) ping router -- success
c) ping XP Home -- failure (Request Time out)

I ran Ethereal on the XP Home machine to see if the ICMP
echo request were getting to the box. It seems that they
are. In addition I ran some diagnostics using netsh
(i.e., diag ping ip) and it seems to work fine.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Guest]

I belive its your firewall still i have worked on
computers all the time and sometimes Norton and Macfee
dont relese the winsocks correctly soo my suggention is to
uninstall Macfee or any firewall you have

 

[Guest]

Thanks for the idea.

I gave that a shot but still am not able to get a
successfull ping.

Any other ideas?

 

[Steve Winograd [MVP]]

I have a Windows XP Pro box and a Windows XP Home box
connected to a Linksys Wireless Router. The router is
connected to the internet. Both computers talk fine to
the internet directly through the router. However I am
having difficulty getting them to talk to one another
fully.

On the XP Home machine I do have MaCafee's Personal
Firewall executing. However for the following ping tests
I disabled the firewall.

Ping test/results:

From the XP Home machine:
a) ping loopback -- success
b) ping local -- success
c) ping router -- success
d) ping XP Pro -- success

From the XP Pro machine:
a) ping loopback -- success
b) ping local -- success
c) ping router -- success
c) ping XP Home -- failure (Request Time out)

I ran Ethereal on the XP Home machine to see if the ICMP
echo request were getting to the box. It seems that they
are. In addition I ran some diagnostics using netsh
(i.e., diag ping ip) and it seems to work fine.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Don't just disable the firewall program while troubleshooting.
Un-install it, too. That's the only way to know for sure whether the
firewall is causing the problem.
--
Best Wishes,
Steve Winograd, MS-MVP (Windows Networking)

Please post any reply as a follow-up message in the news group
for everyone to see. I'm sorry, but I don't answer questions
addressed directly to me in E-mail or news groups.

Microsoft Most Valuable Professional Program
http://mvp.support.microsoft.com

 

[Guest]

Thanks to all that replied and gave me some ideas.

I solved the problem. It was exactly as was suggested.
A firewall was blocking the ICMP messages. However, it
wasn't MaCaffee as I had originally thought, it was ICF
(which comes bundled with XP) that was the culprit (it
was configured to be "on" without me realizing it). Once
I disabled it everything was OK.

Thanks again.

Kris