Networking Problem

[James Screech]

I have a home network consisting of a XP home sp3 laptop, a Vista Home
laptop and
a Netgear DG834 router.
When connected via wireless networking everything works fine, both computers
can connect to the internet and can access shared folders and printers.
However if I connect the XP laptop directly to the router via a cable (I
haven't tried this with the Vista machine) it can still access the internet
but the machines cannot see or access the shared folders/printers on the
other machine. Both laptops are in the same workgroup and using the command
line can ping each other using IP addresses but the Vista machine cannot
ping the XP machine using it's name (the XP machine can ping the Vista one
with it's name).

Does anyone have any ideas why I cannot access the shared folders?

I sometimes need to transfer large amounts of data between the laptops and
would prefer to have one plugged into the router for this as it should be
faster then having both accessing the network via wifi for the transfer. I
know plugging both into the router would probably be the fastest solution
but this is not practical.

James

 

[Malke]

I have a home network consisting of a XP home sp3 laptop, a Vista Home
laptop and
a Netgear DG834 router.
When connected via wireless networking everything works fine, both
computers can connect to the internet and can access shared folders and
printers. However if I connect the XP laptop directly to the router via a
cable (I haven't tried this with the Vista machine) it can still access
the internet but the machines cannot see or access the shared
folders/printers on the other machine. Both laptops are in the same
workgroup and using the command line can ping each other using IP
addresses but the Vista machine cannot ping the XP machine using it's name
(the XP machine can ping the Vista one with it's name).

Does anyone have any ideas why I cannot access the shared folders?

I sometimes need to transfer large amounts of data between the laptops and
would prefer to have one plugged into the router for this as it should be
faster then having both accessing the network via wifi for the transfer. I
know plugging both into the router would probably be the fastest solution
but this is not practical.

What security software do you have installed? I've seen cases where McAfee
was "protecting" the wired and wireless network connections separately and
you had to allow LAN traffic on both of them.

Also check to make sure your ethernet (wired) network is set to Private and
not Public in the Control Panel Networking applet.

Malke

 

[James Screech]

What security software do you have installed? I've seen cases where McAfee
was "protecting" the wired and wireless network connections separately and
you had to allow LAN traffic on both of them.

Also check to make sure your ethernet (wired) network is set to Private
and
not Public in the Control Panel Networking applet.

Malke

Malke,

The only security software I have is AVG anti-virus and Windows firewall.
I cannot see anything in the XP control panel network applet about setting a
network as Public or Private, how do I see this?

James

 

[Malke]

Malke,

The only security software I have is AVG anti-virus and Windows firewall.
I cannot see anything in the XP control panel network applet about setting
a network as Public or Private, how do I see this?

Sorry, since you are posting in a Vista newsgroup I assumed the problem was
with a machine running Vista. Here are my network troubleshooting steps.
Take the bits that are applicable to you:

Excellent, thorough, yet easy to understand article about File/Printer
Sharing in Vista. Includes details about sharing printers as well as files
and folders:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb727037.aspx

For XP, start by running the Network Setup Wizard on all machines (see
caveat in Item A below).

Problems sharing files between computers on a network are generally caused
by 1) a misconfigured firewall or overlooked firewall (including a stateful
firewall in a VPN); or 2) inadvertently running two firewalls such as the
built-in Windows Firewall and a third-party firewall; and/or 3) not having
identical user accounts and passwords on all Workgroup machines; 4) trying
to create shares where the operating system does not permit it.

A. Configure firewalls on all machines to allow the Local Area Network (LAN)
traffic as trusted. With Windows Firewall, this means allowing File/Printer
Sharing on the Exceptions tab. Normally running the Network Setup Wizard on
XP will take care of this for those machines.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/security program with its own
firewall component, then you're fine. With third-party firewalls, I
usually configure the LAN allowance with an IP range. Ex. would be
192.168.1.0-192.168.1.254. Obviously you would substitute your correct
subnet. Refer to any third party security program's Help or user forums for
how to properly configure its firewall. Do not run more than one firewall.
DO NOT TURN OFF FIREWALLS; CONFIGURE THEM CORRECTLY.

B. For ease of organization, put all computers in the same Workgroup. This
is done from the System applet in Control Panel, Computer Name tab.

C. Create matching user accounts and passwords on all machines. You do not
need to be logged into the same account on all machines and the passwords
assigned to each user account can be different; the accounts/passwords just
need to exist and match on all machines. DO NOT NEGLECT TO CREATE
PASSWORDS, EVEN IF ONLY SIMPLE ONES. If you wish a machine to boot directly
to the Desktop (into one particular user's account) for convenience, you
can do this. The instructions at this link work for both XP and Vista:

Configure Windows to Automatically Login (MVP Ramesh) -
http://windowsxp.mvps.org/Autologon.htm

D. If one or more of the computers is XP Pro or Media Center, turn off
Simple File Sharing (Folder Options>View tab).

E. Create shares as desired. XP Home does not permit sharing of users' home
directories or Program Files, but you can share folders inside those
directories. A better choice is to simply use the Shared Documents folder.
See the first link above for details about Vista sharing.

Malke

 

[James Screech]

Sorry, since you are posting in a Vista newsgroup I assumed the problem
was
with a machine running Vista. Here are my network troubleshooting steps.
Take the bits that are applicable to you:

Excellent, thorough, yet easy to understand article about File/Printer
Sharing in Vista. Includes details about sharing printers as well as files
and folders:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb727037.aspx

For XP, start by running the Network Setup Wizard on all machines (see
caveat in Item A below).

Problems sharing files between computers on a network are generally caused
by 1) a misconfigured firewall or overlooked firewall (including a
stateful
firewall in a VPN); or 2) inadvertently running two firewalls such as the
built-in Windows Firewall and a third-party firewall; and/or 3) not having
identical user accounts and passwords on all Workgroup machines; 4) trying
to create shares where the operating system does not permit it.

A. Configure firewalls on all machines to allow the Local Area Network
(LAN)
traffic as trusted. With Windows Firewall, this means allowing
File/Printer
Sharing on the Exceptions tab. Normally running the Network Setup Wizard
on
XP will take care of this for those machines.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/security program with its own
firewall component, then you're fine. With third-party firewalls, I
usually configure the LAN allowance with an IP range. Ex. would be
192.168.1.0-192.168.1.254. Obviously you would substitute your correct
subnet. Refer to any third party security program's Help or user forums
for
how to properly configure its firewall. Do not run more than one firewall.
DO NOT TURN OFF FIREWALLS; CONFIGURE THEM CORRECTLY.

B. For ease of organization, put all computers in the same Workgroup. This
is done from the System applet in Control Panel, Computer Name tab.

C. Create matching user accounts and passwords on all machines. You do not
need to be logged into the same account on all machines and the passwords
assigned to each user account can be different; the accounts/passwords
just
need to exist and match on all machines. DO NOT NEGLECT TO CREATE
PASSWORDS, EVEN IF ONLY SIMPLE ONES. If you wish a machine to boot
directly
to the Desktop (into one particular user's account) for convenience, you
can do this. The instructions at this link work for both XP and Vista:

Configure Windows to Automatically Login (MVP Ramesh) -
http://windowsxp.mvps.org/Autologon.htm

D. If one or more of the computers is XP Pro or Media Center, turn off
Simple File Sharing (Folder Options>View tab).

E. Create shares as desired. XP Home does not permit sharing of users'
home
directories or Program Files, but you can share folders inside those
directories. A better choice is to simply use the Shared Documents folder.
See the first link above for details about Vista sharing.

Malke

The computers work fine if both (Vista and XP Home) wireless, they are in
the same workgroup.

Although I'm far from a network expert the only possible problems that I can
envisage are:
1) Router is blocking communications between wired and wireless network
(though there is nothing about this is it's setup or documentation)
2) The wired networking in XP home is somehow blocking access to the other
machine.

 

[Malke]

James Screech wrote:

The computers work fine if both (Vista and XP Home) wireless, they are in
the same workgroup.

Although I'm far from a network expert the only possible problems that I
can envisage are:
1) Router is blocking communications between wired and wireless network
(though there is nothing about this is it's setup or documentation)
2) The wired networking in XP home is somehow blocking access to the other
machine.

Either go through the steps I already gave you or go through MVP Hans-Georg
Michna's troubleshooter:

http://winhlp.com/wxnet.htm - Small Network Troubleshooter by Hans-Georg
Michna
http://winhlp.com/node/179 - Hans-Georg Michna on Vista-XP Networking

You've got something set up wrong but the only way to find out what it is
will be to troubleshoot hands-on systematically.

Malke