XP Home and XP Pro Workgrouping

[Rebecca]

Hi,

A small business has 3 machines all running XP Pro
connected in a workgroup through a switch/DSL router type
connection. They want to add a laptop running XP Home to
the workgroup. The 3 XP Pro machines can see the XP Home
machine, but the XP Home machine can't see any of the 3 XP
Pro machines! None of the XP Pro machines have NetBIOS
installed and they can see each other, etc. No error
messages... Any ideas? Thanks!

Rebecca

 

[Chuck]

Hi,

A small business has 3 machines all running XP Pro
connected in a workgroup through a switch/DSL router type
connection. They want to add a laptop running XP Home to
the workgroup. The 3 XP Pro machines can see the XP Home
machine, but the XP Home machine can't see any of the 3 XP
Pro machines! None of the XP Pro machines have NetBIOS
installed and they can see each other, etc. No error
messages... Any ideas? Thanks!

Rebecca

Rebecca,

When you say "None of the XP Pro machines have NetBIOS installed", do you mean
NWLink NetBIOS? Or NetBIOS Over TCP/IP? The latter, aka NBT, is a standard in
Windows networking.

Have you verified that you have connectivity between the XP Pro computers and
the XP Home computer?

Test connectivity between one XP Pro computer and the XP Home computer:
1) Ping itself by name.
2) Ping itself by ip address.
3) Ping the other by name.
4) Ping the other by ip address.
5) Ping 127.0.0.1.
6) Ping the router.
Report success / exact error displayed in each test (12 tests total).

Cheers,
Chuck
Paranoia comes from experience - and is not necessarily a bad thing.

 

[Jack]

Hi
May be this can Help: http://www.ezlan.net/sharing.html
Jack (MVP-Networking).

 

[Hans-Georg Michna]

A small business has 3 machines all running XP Pro
connected in a workgroup through a switch/DSL router type
connection. They want to add a laptop running XP Home to
the workgroup. The 3 XP Pro machines can see the XP Home
machine, but the XP Home machine can't see any of the 3 XP
Pro machines! None of the XP Pro machines have NetBIOS
installed and they can see each other, etc. No error
messages... Any ideas? Thanks!

Rebecca,

is the Guest account enabled on the Windows XP Pro computers?

For more details, please see
http://www.michna.com/kb/WxNetwork.htm.

Hans-Georg

 

[Steve Winograd [MVP]]

Hi,

A small business has 3 machines all running XP Pro
connected in a workgroup through a switch/DSL router type
connection. They want to add a laptop running XP Home to
the workgroup. The 3 XP Pro machines can see the XP Home
machine, but the XP Home machine can't see any of the 3 XP
Pro machines! None of the XP Pro machines have NetBIOS
installed and they can see each other, etc. No error
messages... Any ideas? Thanks!

Rebecca

Workgroup browsing requires enabling the NetBIOS applications
programming interface on one of the network protocols: TCP/IP, NWLink
IPX/SPX, or NetBEUI.

If the network uses TCP/IP for file and printer sharing (which is the
default behavior) make sure that NetBIOS over TCP/IP is enabled on all
computers:

1. Open the Network Connections folder.
2. Right click the local area network connection and click Properties.
3. Double click Internet Protocol (TCP/IP).
4. Click Advanced.
5. Click WINS.
6. Click the Enable NetBIOS Over TCP/IP button.

Run "ipconfig /all" on the XP Home computer and look at the "Node
Type" at the beginning of the output. If it says "Peer-to-Peer"
(which should actually be "Point-to-Point") that's the problem. It
means that the computer only uses a WINS server, which isn't available
on a peer-to-peer network, for NetBIOS name resolution.

If that's the case, run the registry editor, open this key:

HLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Netbt\Parameters

and delete these values if they're present:

NodeType
DhcpNodeType

Reboot, then try network access again.

If that doesn't fix it, open that registry key again, create a DWORD
value called "NodeType", and set it to 1 for "Broadcast" or 4 for
"Mixed".

For details, see these Microsoft Knowledge Base articles:

Default Node Type for Microsoft Clients
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;160177

TCP/IP and NBT Configuration Parameters for Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;314053
--
Best Wishes,
Steve Winograd, MS-MVP (Windows Networking)

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