2 machines in home network

[Scot]

I have two machines in a home network: desktop1 and desktop2. They are both
in the same workgroup. Both are running Windows 2000 Professional.

Desktop1 can see Desktop2 in Network Neighborhood and can map drives to
Desktop2 via the machine name. Desktop2 cannot see Desktop1 in Network
Neighborhood, and cannot map drives via the machine name - it can however
map drives to Desktop1 by using the ip address of Desktop1. So network
connectivity is all set. Seems to be some sort of weird name resolution
issue.

Anyone have any ideas?

Thanks,

Scott

 

[Paul King]

Have you setup your machine names in your local LMHOSTS file?

Bascially if you only have TCPIP protocol loaded this does not broadcast the
computer name on your network. Therefore to get round the issue you can
insert machine names with its coresponding IP address into the file and
HeyPresto!

For example:

192.168.0.1 Desktop1
192.168.0.2 Desktop2

Make sure that you update this on Machine1 and Machine2. Also don't use the
LMHOSTS.SAM file.

Hope this helps
Paul.

 

[Scot]

Thanks for the tip Paul, I was actually going to try the lmhosts today.
Curious why the 1st desktop can see the 2nd desktop without a problem via
name. Have run into weird issues like this before and other times have not
had a problem without adding anything.

 

[Scot]

FYI. What it came down to was one of the machines didn't have 'Enable
NetBIOS over TCP/IP' checked, but had NetBIOS from DHCP instead. Since the
DHCP server was not giving any name resolution related info out, that was
the missing link.

Scott

 

[Paul King]

Oh. Well Im glad everything is now working.

Cheers
Paul.