"No Network Places"

[jjjdavidson]

We have several Win XP Pro machines on a small office
network. On a few of them (and the list seems to change
from time to time), if you browse to My Network Places in
Windows Explorer then nothing shows up at all. No
shortcuts, no folders, no "Entire Network" icon, nothing.
Refreshes do no good.

The network is out there; file and printer sharing work
fine to and from the afflicted workstations. You simply
can't browse to anywhere through My Network Places.

On some of the other XP Pro systems, network shortcuts
show up, but you have to hit Refresh once to get "Entire
Network" to appear. After that single Refresh, browsing
the network works normally.

Sound familiar to anyone?

 

[Joe727]

It sure does. I have two XP Pro computers networked and the same problem.
Here's what I did
to work around it.

Open My Network Places.

Click View Workgroup Computers

Right click the networked computer and create a shortcut on the desktop. If
you are on Computer 1 Right click Computer 2. If you are on Computer 2,
Right click Computer 1.

Every shared folder will be accessible by using that new shortcut even if
they don't show up in My Network Places. I don't understand why, and I
finally gave up after spending a couple of hours trying to figure it out.

I then used TweakUI for XP to remove the "regular" My Network Places icon
from the Desktop. Then I changed the icon of the My Network Places folder
to the same one as the My Network Places icon/shortcut that I removed from
the Desktop.

Here's a composite screen shot of what I did:

http://home.cfl.rr.com/jbmsbink/My Network Places Screen shot.jpg

XP TweakUI can be downloaded here:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/downloads/powertoys.asp

HTH
Joe

 

[jjjdavidson]

Yes and no. I opened My Network Places from the XP Pro
desktop icon. Since we're on a domain I didn't have View
Workgroup Computers, so I clicked Add a Network Place
instead.

Once I created a single network shortcut (to the main
share on the server) suddenly My Network Places in Windows
Explorer came to life!

Apparently if you have no network shortcuts set up,
Windows Explorer won't display anything at all under My
Network Places. Add just one shortcut, and (after the
obligatory single Refresh) My Network Places shows the
whole network properly.

Arrgh. Never have this problem under Win 2000.

 

[Joe727]

I'm a bit unclear. Did the "shortcut solution" solve the problem permanetly
or do you have to refresh every so often?

I put my shortcuts in a folder I created on the Desktop called My Network
Places as seen in the jpeg I provided a link to. That's actually a folder
with the My Network Places icon instead of the manila folder icon.

I'm not on a domain and I never had Windows 2000. I moved up from 98SE.

Joe

 

[Guest]

Whenever I open Windows Explorer, I have to move to My
Network Places, expand it, then hit Refresh one time.
After that, My Network Places (why does Microsoft name
everything so childishly?) works normally as long as
Windows Explorer is open.

 

[Joe727]

Give my solution a try. You can drag all the shortcuts for each computer
into a folder on the desktop as I described in my previous posts. That
should solve the problem. In other words, if you have ten computers, your
folder on the desktop of computer #1 will have the shortcuts for computers 2
through 10 in it.

Joe

 

[Peter Nolan]

Hi Guys,
just so you know...got my shiny new dell with XP Pro last week and
found no option to 'add a network place' in 'my network places'..in
explorer...why they moved it I will never know...anyway, found your
discussion here and got it working for myself...so thank you for
recording your discussions on the group...

Peter Nolan

 

[Ramesh, MS-MVP]

"Add a network place' icons appears in the folder view, when you use Classic folders, otherwise it appears in Common Tasks pane.

--
Ramesh, Microsoft MVP
Windows XP Shell/User
http://windowsxp.mvps.org


Hi Guys,
just so you know...got my shiny new dell with XP Pro last week and
found no option to 'add a network place' in 'my network places'..in
explorer...why they moved it I will never know...anyway, found your
discussion here and got it working for myself...so thank you for
recording your discussions on the group...

Peter Nolan