Problem accessing parts of home network from work laptop.

[ejohnson]

Have my work laptop (XP Pro) that I use on my home network. When I
place this laptop on my home network I am able to connect to the
internet via the cable modem on the router (Linksys BEFSR41) and to a
printer connected to a print server (Linksys 2 port print server).
However I am neither able to connect to my home desktop nor the printer
(HP Deskjet 952C) that is being shared by that desktop. The home
computer is set up to use a workgroup while the work laptop is set up
to use a domain. I have tried pinging in both directions and have been
unsuccessful (get "Unknown host" message). When I view the entire
network from "My Network Places" I see both the workgroup and domain
names however I am only able to view whichever is associated with the
computer I am sitting at (error message says it is not accessible and
the network path could not be found). Is there any way to get these
two computers to talk to each other? I have done some searching but
have been unable to find anything that solves my problem.

TIA

Erik

 

[bryce.yates]

Have you tried pinging just the ip address of either device. Also
verify that both assigned IP addresses are on the same subnet. If you
are using the default Linksys ip range both computers should have an ip
address in the range of 192.169.1.1 to 192.168.1.254. If one of the
computers (2000 or XP) has a ip address starting with 169 then this is
a sign that this computer is not getting an IP address from dhcp.
Good Luck

Bryce

 

[Erik]

Bryce,

All are on the same subnet and getting a valid IP address. I tried you
suggestion by IP address. I was able to get a response without issue
going from the laptop to the desktop. However when pinging from the
desktop to the laptop I would get a reply once about every 28 attempts.
Does this give you any ideas on what my problem may be or next steps?
Thanks for the help.

Erik

 

[g3]

Erik,

The problem arises from you folks being on different workgroups /
domains. You have a couple of choices. Remove your laptop from the
domain (not recomended) or change the name of your home workgroup to
match your office domain name. Then set up yourselfs as users on each
machine so that you can log in successfully. That should take care of
the issue.

By default, Windows disables the "Guest" user account. If you enable
this account on either machine and give that user rights to access
files you will also be able to access each others files. However, this
opens a significant security hole that would allow anyone with a laptop
and a wireless card access to your files as well. Obviously, this is a
last resort effort.

Hope that helps.

Gary

 

[Erik]

Gary,

Thanks for your reply. I had read something about it possibly being a
difference between the workgroup name and the domain name however I
thought (actually hoped) that this was an older behavior and these two
items would play better together. In fact I could swear that
communicating between these 2 computer worked before. Sounds like was
wrong.

The way I'm reading what you wrote it sounds like I have a few choices.
I take the laptop of the domain, I make the domain and workgroup names
the same or I need to activate the guest account (which as you stated
opens up other issues). Is this correct? I can't take the laptop off
the domain but I could make the domain and workgroup names the same. I
do however have a question about the guest account option. First,
since my wireless network has WEP enabled someone would still need to
this to even get on the network. So would this option be a simple as
just activating the Guest account or do I need to then assign that user
permissions to the directories/printers I want to get access too?
Really all I want this laptop to be able to do is access a printer
attached to the desktop and maybe one shared directory on the desktop.
Thanks again for your help. I appreciate it.

Erik

 

[bryce.yates]

Erik, I agree with gary in regards to once you are able to communicate
from both devices you will need to take his advice, but since you
tested just pinging the ip address the domain/workgroup of the machine
doesn't come into play. from the desktop try running a trace route
(tracert) to the laptop. The reponse from this command should show
just 1 hop from your router. If you see this hopping out to the
internet then there is a routing issue on your firewall/router.

Also check to make sure the desktop is not connected to the DMZ port on
your Firewall/router.

Also another solution to your domain workgroup is to create a username
on the desktop with that is the same as the userid you log into your
laptop with, and make sure the password is the same.

Bryce

 

[Ross Durie]

Workgroup issue is irrelevant as every machine can be in a different
workgroup or domain if you wish.

http://www.practicallynetworked.com/sharing/xp_filesharing/index.htm
http://www.practicallynetworked.com/sharing/xp/filesharing.htm
http://www.practicallynetworked.com/sharing/troubleshoot/
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/community/columns/cableguy/cg0204.mspx