Machine not visible in Workgroup

[Michael Ben-Gershon]

I have a small home network with 3 machines:

linux runs linux and a samba server
mypc and childpc run XP Professional.

All the computers are in a workgroup called BGNET

Browsing to BGNET on EITHER XP machine, or in the Gnome
desktop of the linux machine shows up only 2 machines: linux
and mypc. childpc is not visible.

However, it is possible to type \\childpc in the 'run ...' box
of the START menu and see the shares on that computer, and
even browse them.

In short, the childpc computer is perfectly accessible from the
rest of the network, but does not show up as part of the workgroup.

The linux machine is providing DNS.

As far as I can recall, everything worked fine until recently,
but things seem to have gone odd now.

Any ideas? I have trawled the web, but don't seem to have found an
answer yet!

Michael Ben-Gershon
(e-mail address removed)

 

[Eric Lewis]

I have an even smaller network with WinXP Pro providing a
modem connection to the Internet using ICS (Internet
Connection Sharing) and Ethernet Lan to connect to the
other computer running Windows Server 2003.

In Windows Explorer WinServer2003 shows up in the
workgroup folder ON BOTH MACHINES but WinXPpro does not
show up in the workgroup folder on either machine ...
Even so, I can search for the WinXPpro machine, find it,
and it is listed as being in the workgroup in the search
results window. It just won't display there in Windows
Explorer. And probably for related reasons, it won't
show up in the destination field of the Backup Utility.
I am able to use the entire path to a shared folder in
the backup filename box (\\WinXPpro\shared-
temp\backup.bkf) In otherwords I can get at the other
machine by specifying its name \\WinXPpro\ but not by
browsing to the Workgroup folder.

This problem appears to be identical Michael Ben-Gershon
reports.

I think this problem crept in as part of a Network setup
step I don't recall doing that wound up with a Bridge
between the LAN NIC and the Modem ... which I have
removed because I don't need a bridge (ICS is supposed to
do that) and it caused the network performance to drop to
almost zero. Also, the WinServer2003 machine is not able
to successfully download a web page although it is able
to do make an ititial contact. I don't think these
problems are related but I mention it because it could
be.

Eric Lewis