File and Print Sharing

[Guest]

I’m having problems with file and printer sharing on my 3 computers at home.
They are all connected by a wireless router. I apologize in advance for the
long and confusing post. Here are the setups:

Computer X is a desktop running XP Home and has a printer attached.
Computer Y is a laptop running XP Pro.
Computer Z is a desktop running XP Pro and has a printer attached.

I used to have just computers Y and Z and recently built computer X. Before
the computer X addition, I could share files between Y and Z and the printer
connected to Z could be used by Y over the network. Once I added computer X
though, all of the connections between computer Y and computers X and Z went
off. Y can no longer share files with computers X and Z and can not use their
printers, though I can still use the internet. Strangely enough, computers X
and Z can talk: they share files and printers just fine. It just figures that
the only computer that doesn’t have a printer hooked up is the one that isn’t
right with the network.

Reading through the other posts on this forum, I’ve taken all the
suggestions that I can:

-I’ve run the network setup wizard again for all computers. Very rarely,
the connection will succeed and I’ll be able to see all three computers from
computer Y. But soon after, the connection fails for no apparent reason. Even
on fresh startups, the connection doesn’t come back.
-All computers are part of the same workgroup.
-All computers have the “File and Printer Sharing†exception turned on in
Windows Firewall and there is no other firewall running. Computers X and Z
have Windows Firewall turned off at all times but the Firewall on Y keeps
turning on again whenever I restart. Even when I turn it off, I still have
problems.
-I went into the network properties of computer Y and selected Enable for
NetBios (not Default).

The previous post most similar to mine can be found by doing a search for
“File Sharing ACVillar†under the XP General forum. That post ended with no
solution at the same point that I am at now.

If you can make any sense of this alphabet soup and have any ideas, I would
be most appreciative.

Thanks,

br

 

[Guest]

Just in case anyone is having the same problem, I finally paid microsoft to
fix it. After about 9 hours on the phone they found that the problem was
related to the DHCP Node Type. Apparently, the Node Type needed to be set to
the same thing for all the computers on my network. One was set to
"Peer-to-Peer" and the other two were set to "Unknown".

To find out what the Node Type is, go to a command prompt and type 'ipconfig
/all'. Node Type should be the third listing down. To set the type to
"Unknown", delete the DhcpNodeType from the registry under
HKLM\system\currentcontrolset\services\NetBT\Parameters.