Adding a password to desktop XP account blocks file, printer shari

[Peter M Smith]

Desktop has XP Home and a Canon printer - Norton IS 2009
Laptop has Vista Home Premium and is connected via WiFi to a Siemens router
attached via ethernet to the desktop. Laptop account is password protected.
Also uses Norton IS 2009.
I set up file and printer sharing and from laptop was able to successfully
send print jobs to the desktop and access desktop files. Great.
Norton however recommended setting a password on my (admin) account on the
desktop, which I did. It has same userID and password as on laptop.
This however immediately stopped laptop from accessing shared folders and
printer on the desktop.
I can however still access shared files on laptop from desktop.
Disabling NIS on both PCs does not help.
What can I do to get around this?

 

[Jack \(MVP-Networking\).]

Hi
I do not know under what condition the 3rd party Firewall was installed.
However in many cases it comes preinstalled on single None Networked
computer and it is not configured correctly for Network traffic. Just
disabling a 3rd party Firewall does not mean that it is out of the system
(especially Not for LAN traffic).
You can try to totally get rid (I.e Uninstall and clean) of the 3rtd party
Firewall, and then Configure again all Sharing and permission of the
computers.
When every thing works you can try to install again the 3rd party Firewall.
It might be that at this point the installation would take into
consideration the network. YMMV
Jack (MS, MVP-Networking)

 

[Peter M Smith]

A technician from Symantec did exactly that yesterday but it did not help. I
was only when I removed the admin account pw that I could again access shared
printer and folders.
In any case the firewall was already there when I implemented sharing, and
it caused no problems I was aware of.
Peter

 

[Peter M Smith]

Oops! You appear to have been on the right track. When I yesterday removed
my admin account password, I had at the same time re-installed NIS 2009 on my
desktop (it was done before for me by a Norton technician on the laptop, but
that did not help). That things were then working I attributed to the wrong
thing, as it seems that Norton starts some services but not all after a first
re-boot. It was only this morning when all Norton services were started, that
as before there was no sharing
I removed NIS 2009 - sharing came back
I installed Norton AV 2009 - sharing again not possible, i.e. this is where
the problem lies, not with the firewall part of NIS
I installed NIS 2008 - sharing came back.

A quick look with Google hints that a new Norton AV "feature", auto-protect,
is causing network access to files and folders to be killed - I must follow
this up with Norton. Perhaps it can be disabled for network access.
Thank again, and sorry for the red herring.
Peter