troubleshooting home network

[earthdragon]

I have a home desktop and a home laptop. I would like to share files and a
printer between them. After enormous effort, no success. After following the
steps in the MS Help and Support-troubleshoot home networking article ID
308007, it appears there is a problem with connectivity and/or name
resolution on one or both of them.

I have no ping on the laptop. It will ping itself but not the desktop
(with Windows firewall on). The laptop also has McAfee Antivirus Enterprise
8.0.0 (that interferes with everything-not upgradeable-another story). The
desktop will ping itself and the laptop (with Windows firewall on). Both will
only ping using IP addresses, neither will ping any names.

Desktop is Windows XP Home SP3, laptop is Windows XP Home SP2 (unresolved
issue with MS update), connected to a 2Wire 2701HG-B home gateway (dsl with
multiple ethernet ports and wireless connectivity. Both IP addresses appear
normal. aaa.bbb.c.64 (desktop) and aaa.bbb.c.67 (laptop).

I believe it worked at one time, since My Network Places on the laptop shows
folders on the desktop, but My Network Places on the desktop shows no folders
on any other computers (there is one other desktop and one other laptop in my
home but I don't think any work on the home network).

When I click on the Shared Folders on the desktop computer (from my admin
account), I get an error message:

\(desktop)\shareddocs is not accessible. You might not have permission to
use this network resource.Contact the administrator of this server to find
out if you have access permissions.
The network path was not found.

I only have XP Home, and I'm the only administrator on both. I don't know
anything about any permissions.

My Network Places only shows up in my desktop user account (no My Network
Place in my admin account).

I cannot tell you how much time I have spent trying to chase this down. I'm
not the most computer literate guy in the world, but it doesn't seem like it
should have to be this difficult.

Thanks in advance and any assistance is appreciated.

 

[Malke]

I have a home desktop and a home laptop. I would like to share files and a
printer between them. After enormous effort, no success. After following
the steps in the MS Help and Support-troubleshoot home networking article
ID 308007, it appears there is a problem with connectivity and/or name
resolution on one or both of them.

I have no ping on the laptop. It will ping itself but not the desktop
(with Windows firewall on). The laptop also has McAfee Antivirus
Enterprise 8.0.0 (that interferes with everything-not upgradeable-another
story). The desktop will ping itself and the laptop (with Windows firewall
on). Both will only ping using IP addresses, neither will ping any names.

Desktop is Windows XP Home SP3, laptop is Windows XP Home SP2 (unresolved
issue with MS update), connected to a 2Wire 2701HG-B home gateway (dsl
with multiple ethernet ports and wireless connectivity. Both IP addresses
appear normal. aaa.bbb.c.64 (desktop) and aaa.bbb.c.67 (laptop).

(snippage)

Uninstall McAfee and then use their removal tool.
http://service.mcafee.com/FAQDocument.aspx?id=TS100507

If you have a third-party firewall installed, uninstall it completely. The
built-in Windows Firewall is fine for most people.

Then see if your network works. If it does, replace McAfee. I recommend
NOD32 (commercial), Avast (free version available), or Avira (free version
available). If not, take a look at the general networking troubleshooting
steps below. If they don't help, take the time to go through MVP Hans-Georg
Michna's Small Network Troubleshooter. It will usually pinpoint the source
of the problem.

http://winhlp.com/wxnet.htm - Small Network Troubleshooter by Hans-Georg
Michna

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:

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

D. 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.

Malke

 

[earthdragon]

Thanks for the replies.

Turns out that right after I posted I tried it again and it worked (both
computers pinged with IP and name). Apparently, I had done something wrong.

malke-
Thanks so much for all the helpful suggestions. I really haven't had a
chance to chase it down yet and I'm pretty sure the McAfee is not helping.
I hope to be able to follow your instructions soon and hopefully get to the
bottom of it.

Thanks so much again.