networking with Vista

[Iwishiknewitbetta]

Have a desktop and laptop both running Vista home, Tried putting home network
together with them but neither can see each other. Discovery option turned
on, file sharing etc. on both machines. Laptop connects to router through
wifi with wep encryption. Desktop is connected to to router through ethernet
cable. Both use firewalls (laptop Norton, dt windows).

A little bit worried here because Vista seems not to support this config
directly. It seems to be looking for all devices to be connected wirelessly
and, of course the desktop isn't and neither does it have a wifi card in it.

Have tried many solutions but neither see each other but both see the router
and connect to the internet easily enough. When working with XP never had
this problem - why should Vista makes a simple exercise so tricky? Grateful
for any help on this.

 

[Malke]

Have a desktop and laptop both running Vista home, Tried putting home
network together with them but neither can see each other. Discovery
option turned on, file sharing etc. on both machines. Laptop connects to
router through wifi with wep encryption. Desktop is connected to to router
through ethernet cable. Both use firewalls (laptop Norton, dt windows).

A little bit worried here because Vista seems not to support this config
directly. It seems to be looking for all devices to be connected
wirelessly and, of course the desktop isn't and neither does it have a
wifi card in it.

This is absolutely not true. Vista doesn't expect your devices to be
connected wirelessly! And you have a standard networking setup, nothing
unusual except that you're using WEP which isn't a good idea. You really
want to use WPA/WPA2-PK if you can (all wireless devices must support the
higher level of encryption). You've just left something out. You probably
forgot to configure your firewalls or make common users. See below:

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

Problems sharing files between computers on a network are generally caused
by 1) a misconfigured firewall; 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. Since you are running third-party firewalls
or have an antivirus with "Internet Worm Protection" (like Norton 2006/07)
which acts as a firewall, you need to make sure you don't have two
firewalls running and you need to configure the third-party firewall
appropriately. 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. Do not run more than
one firewall.

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. 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

Malke