Ok, I bit the bullet and uninstalled Norton Internet Security. It's a
little better...
The PC in question now is seen by the other PCs when I View Workgroup
Computers.
However, when I try to browse the computer in question, I receive the
following message:
"... is not accessable. You might not have permission to use this network
resource..."
I have file and print sharing turned on and the shares on the PC are set up
to allow others to
change my files.
In addition, the other computers on the home network cannot be seen by the
PC in question.
Another Item in question. You had me uninstall NIS. How come I've been
running NIS on the
workstation in question for over a year without a problem? The problem only
occured after I had
to repair the Windows intallation on the PC in question.
The error "... is not accessable. You might not have permission to use this
network resource..." can have various causes.
- Physical network broken.
- Firewall problem.
- Name resolution problem.
- Browser problem.
- Permissions problem.
Norton Personal Firewall makes a lot of hooks into the network portion of the
operating system. If you repair the operating system, you're running a
Microsoft procedure. That Microsoft procedure may not successfully repair the
network, with NPF installed.
Did you try enabling and configuring NPF? That was an alternative, and one
which in my experience is more effective than (the third, already tried)
disabling NPF.
Based upon a system repair as being anecdotally involved with the problem, and
with a third party network product being installed, I suspected we would be
better off without NPF to complicate things.
Now with NPF out of the way, let's look at the browser situation again. The
immediate cause of the lack of visibility is that both MDGDESKTOP and
MDGDELL9100 have elected themselves master browsers. MDGDELL9100 sees other
servers, but MDGDESKTOP sees only itself.
On a 4 computer LAN, you should have no more than 2 browsers - a master and a
backup. The master browser election is a pretty complicated peer-peer process.
<
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/winntas/deploy/prodspecs/ntbrowse.mspx>
The backup browser has to accept that role - it can't be a second master
browser.
Try powering all 4 computers off, one after the other. Then power each one back
on, starting with the computer that stays online the most consistently, so it
will elect itself as the master browser, and give the others the chance to
accept that election. See if that corrects the browser situation.
If that doessn't fix things, we'll start diagnosing the problem.
BTW, Mike, posting your email address openly will get you more unwanted email,
than wanted email. Learn to munge your email address properly, to keep yourself
a bit safer when posting to open forums. Protect yourself and the rest of the
internet - read this article.
http://www.mailmsg.com/SPAM_munging.htm
One of the advantages of using the Microsoft CDO to post your messages is that
the only email address that gets exposed was MrMike <AT>
discussions.microsoft.com.
--
Cheers,
Chuck
Paranoia comes from experience - and is not necessarily a bad thing.
My email is AT DOT
actual address pchuck sonic net.
