Home Networking

[Guest]

I have searched these threads and havent found anything to help me with my
current problem.

I have 3 computers, 2 of whch run XP Pro and 1 runs XP Home.

My 1st desktop is connected to a wireless router via cat5 cable. My other
computers are connected to the router via wireless. All computers can access
the internet.

My problem is getting the computers to see on another. When I access my
Networking Places, nothing appears. All computer have different ip address's
and have unique names. Can anyone shed some light please

 

[Malke]

I have searched these threads and havent found anything to help me
with my current problem.

I have 3 computers, 2 of whch run XP Pro and 1 runs XP Home.

My 1st desktop is connected to a wireless router via cat5 cable. My
other computers are connected to the router via wireless. All
computers can access the internet.

My problem is getting the computers to see on another. When I access
my Networking Places, nothing appears. All computer have different ip
address's and have unique names. Can anyone shed some light please

This is most commonly caused by a misconfigured firewall. Run the
Network Setup Wizard on all computers, making sure to enable File &
Printer Sharing, and reboot. The only "gotcha" is that this will turn
on the XPSP2 Windows Firewall. If you aren't running a third-party
firewall or have an antivirus with "Internet Worm Protection" (like
Norton 2005/06) which acts as a firewall, then you're fine. If you have
third-party firewall software, configure it to allow the Local Area
Network traffic as trusted. I usually do this with my firewalls with an
IP range. Ex. would be 192.168.1.0-192.168.1.254. Obviously you would
substitute your correct subnet.

If one or more of the computers is XP Pro or Media Center:

a. If you need Pro's ability to set fine-grained permissions, turn off
Simple File Sharing (Folder Options>View tab) and create identical user
accounts/passwords on all computers.

b. If you don't care about using Pro's advanced features, leave the
Simple File Sharing enabled.

Simple File Sharing means that Guest (network) is enabled. This means
that anyone without a user account on the target system can use its
resources. This is a security hole but only you can decide if it
matters in your situation.

Then create shares as desired. XP Home does not permit sharing of users'
home directories (My Documents) or Program Files, but you can share
folders inside those directories. A better choice is to simply use the
Shared Documents folder.

If that doesn't work for you, here is an excellent network
troubleshooter by MVP Hans-Georg Michna. Take the time to go through it
and it will usually pinpoint the problem area(s) -
http://winhlp.com/wxnet.htm

Malke

 

[Guest]

I've struggled with my home network, and I would check these easy issues
first:

- FIREWALLS. I shut them off to quickly see if there're blocking things.

- FILE and PRINT SHARE. Double check to make sure they're on as they're
supposed to.

- Network Places -Not there may not mean its not there. It may mean that
Network places is not updating and displaying it quickly. Even when Network
places is empty, when I click "workgroup computers" the icons come up, and
I'm able to go manually add them in one by one by going thru "add a network
place". Then a day or two later, network places find the resources by itself,
and everything shows up twice, the one I add in manually, and the one network
places finds by itself, sometimes a day or two later.

I had a prior post that Malke asnwered where I bought the laptop into my
office where I have another XP Home network set up. When I bought the laptop
home, it's still got my office network on it, nothing on my home network for
more than 24 hours It finally showed up.

A few nights later, it disappeared again, so I manually added it in.

 

[Guest]

I've tried adding manually and all i get is the you do not have permission
blah blah blah. I also tried what Malke suggested and still no joy. My router
see's all computers fine, I'm at my wits end with it. Im just wondering if
its anything to do with settings on my router.

 

[Guest]

Just curious.

When you try to add manually, it says "you do not have permission", but was
it at least visably there so that you CAN SEE it when you try to add??

When this happens, I try to add "ShareDocs" into the network neighborhood
since sharedocs are supposed to have th proper file permissions by default,
and it always works. If "sharedocs" work, and lets say "mydocs" don't work,
then its more of a "file permissions" issue in mydocs.

Don't know if you have Norton's installed, but I recall there were issues
there causing some problems, I vaguely recall with something called the
IRPstacksize (changing from 11 to 15 as I recall in the registry). I also
recall Malke did a post somewhere along the lines on that too. It's been so
long I don't recall all the details.

 

[Guest]

Yeah I have Norton Internet Security Pro installed, could this be the problem?

 

[Guest]

Oh to add: I didnt see anything in my networks at all

 

[Guest]

I'm not sure its your router. To check this, did you try pinging one PC to
the other to see if this is so??

There was a few things strange with Nortons. I use the suite called "Norton
Interent Security" 2006. So, first of all, if you use Nortons, you'll have to
shut down the WIndows firewall. If you have a firewall with Norton's did you
at least "disable" it to test sharing??

When I started out with networking, had the same issues as you, and part of
it was Nortons. For instance, each PC has it's IP address, that I have to
program into the the Norton firewall to allow other PC's in the workgroup
thru based oon IP address. I designated a range, starting from 192.168.1.100
thru 192.168.1.110 as I recall. I still had a problem. So instead of the
range, I entered ten IP addresses individually, to see what happens, and it
worked this way. It's been that way since.

The IRPstacksize problem was apparently cause by NortonAntiVirus, though
lately there hasn't been any reported issues. I recall the value should be
set at 15. Apparently with the smaller value, you get error messages when
trying to access resoruces on the network, one of them as I recall, says you
don't have permission.

 

[Guest]

Well thanks for the info guys. I seem to have the problem sorted now. It was
norton all along. Again, thank you very much, appreciated

 

[Guest]

Glad it's taken care of.

Be nice if you can take a minute to tell us what you exactly done, since
getting a network up and running got me pulling my hair out for a while.
Seems Norton's always bring another level of complication into the mix.

I've upgraded from Nortons 2002, 2004, and 2006. How exactly is Norton Pro
different???

Asking since I have to renew Norton's for another year (box kept coming up),
and I find their software, together with AOL on my PC's quite bloated, and
they leave little room for every else. I also have Norton Ghost 9.0 for
backup.

 

[Guest]

I went over the advice again from the start. I disabled my firewall on all 3
comps and and `tadaa' the computers were showing in My Networks. All I did
with norton was as Malke suggested was input a range, but I did mine with
with the Wizard rather than type it manually, which i did try before with no
joy. Im not really sure how different Norton Professional is from the home
version. I can only assume its the same idea as XP Pro compared to the XP
home edition, having more user options in order to 'finetune' the software.
Its Norton 2004 I'm using just now, did use 2002 before however didnt have a
network back then.