Unable to access Win9x computer from XP... solved

[Beverly Howard [Ms-MVP/MobileDev]]

Some time ago, I posted here in an unsuccessful attempt to solve my
inability to access two Win9x computers on a network _from_ XP

I had tried all posted solutions and configurations with zero success
and totally gave up on solving it about six months ago.

The issue was made stranger by the fact that the inaccessible computers
had no problems accessing the XP computer(s) and the XP computers could
access pop3 and smtp mail servers on one of the machines that could not
be accessed using file explorer.

Today, while glancing at the list of computers on the network, I noticed
that the names of the two inaccessible computers had one thing in common
with each other that they had with none of the other computers... a
<space> in their <computernames>

Removed the space from the name on each computer, rebooted and XP had no
problems accessing them. fwiw, one inaccessable box was running Win98
and the other Win95

Additional thought... I have no way to test this, but I'm guessing that
this particular problem would have disappeared if the network had a wins
server.

Hope this helps,
Beverly Howard [MS MVP-Mobile Devices]

 

[Hans-Georg Michna]

Some time ago, I posted here in an unsuccessful attempt to solve my
inability to access two Win9x computers on a network _from_ XP

I had tried all posted solutions and configurations with zero success
and totally gave up on solving it about six months ago.

The issue was made stranger by the fact that the inaccessible computers
had no problems accessing the XP computer(s) and the XP computers could
access pop3 and smtp mail servers on one of the machines that could not
be accessed using file explorer.

Today, while glancing at the list of computers on the network, I noticed
that the names of the two inaccessible computers had one thing in common
with each other that they had with none of the other computers... a
<space> in their <computernames>

Removed the space from the name on each computer, rebooted and XP had no
problems accessing them. fwiw, one inaccessable box was running Win98
and the other Win95

Additional thought... I have no way to test this, but I'm guessing that
this particular problem would have disappeared if the network had a wins
server.

Beverly,

thanks for reporting this! It is actually known and documented,
but difficult to find.

You could help making it easy to find if you could remember and
let me know the exact symptoms. Were the computers totally
invisible in Network Neighborhood or My Network Places? Or were
they visible and caused an error message when trying to access
them? If so, which error message?

Hans-Georg