network computer not seen?

[Wayne Fulton]

A friend brough a new Dell 1150 laptop over last week. It has no floppy,
and the goal was to copy floppys from my computer over the wired network
to the new Dell computer. I never imagined it would be any problem.
The Dell has network and also wireless. My home network is wired, with
three computers working on it. All involved computers are XP Home SP2.
The Dell is running Norton Internet Security, firewall and all, as is,
out of the box.

My router was seeing the new Dell, but my computers were not seeing the
Dell, nor it them. The workgroup name was MSHOME in all. Other than
workgroup name, what might be the reason the computers were not seen?
Is this just a sharing issue? I thought the computer should be visible
if shared or not? I started to share drive C on Dell via Windows
Explorer right click, but got a new box I've never seen before saying
"better use the network wizard for this", and we backed away then,
fearing we might disturb the wireless settings. Is this part all it
needs to be seen?

Or might it be a Norton firewall issue?

Any ideas appreciated.

 

[GB]

OK first of all disable simple file sharing:

double click My Computer click on Tools -> Folder Options -> View
scroll down all the way and untick the "use simple file sharing"
click on apply and you are 1/2 way there.

Now, in order to be able to see and fiddle with the shared folder/s you
need to create some users and assign these
some passwords.

Let's say that Peter is on the Dell machine and his password is king123,
in order for Peter to be able to access
a shared folder on your machine, you must create peter as a user with
the same password and give peter some
permissions by right clicking the folder and choosing sharing and
security and then clicking on the security tab.

Done, don't worry about upsetting the Wireless (I know, that can be
pesky as well)

There....I hope this is of help and I hope you have some encryption on
that wireless of yours

Regards

GB

 

[Wayne Fulton]

OK first of all disable simple file sharing:

double click My Computer click on Tools -> Folder Options -> View
scroll down all the way and untick the "use simple file sharing"
click on apply and you are 1/2 way there.

Now, in order to be able to see and fiddle with the shared folder/s you
need to create some users and assign these
some passwords.

Let's say that Peter is on the Dell machine and his password is king123,
in order for Peter to be able to access
a shared folder on your machine, you must create peter as a user with
the same password and give peter some
permissions by right clicking the folder and choosing sharing and
security and then clicking on the security tab.

Done, don't worry about upsetting the Wireless (I know, that can be
pesky as well)

Thanks GB. I think you may be discussing XP Professional. The XP Help says
"NOTE: The Simple File Sharing interface cannot be disabled in Windows XP
Home Edition." All these comptuers are XP Home.

I am thinking now that we just should have run the Dell laptop Network
Setup Wizard to enable Microsoft File and Printer sharing the first time.
I was expecting to see the computer first, and then enable sharing, but
apparently it doesnt work that way. The concern about doing that was that I
didnt know how it was going to affect the wireless network installed in it.

 

[GB]

Hi Wayne,

Sorry I must have misunderstood. Try with creating the users first and
see how you go, XP home is a bit of a dog.
regards

GB