XP Home networking- desperate diatribe

[Peter Scott]

I am coming to hate XP Home. I dislike upgrading Windows at the best of
times. I happily run 98SE on two computers on a very reliable home network.
When I bought a new machine the only option was XP Home. Not knowing any
better I reluctantly agreed. Yes, hardware and software installed fine and
it looked and felt good. That was until I tried to network it.

The classic problem. XP sees 98. 98 gets the dreaded IPC$ box. I have read
and tried helpful suggestions in this NG. Many of these included interesting
tricks, but we should not need tricks. It should just work. I have used the
verbose and ultimately useless material at Microsoft. M does not seem to
accept that there is a problem.

My beef is that Microsoft calls it XP Home so surely must expect it to be
used at *home*. At home we probably don't want the full power of NT security
do we? We want ease of use and flexibility. Why do they not provide a route
to disable it? Perhaps a tick box in the IPC$ thing saying 'bypass security'.
Is that too much to ask?

I:

1 Made a setup disk and ran it on all machines

2 Checked that machines ping in both directions

3 Ensured that all users are on all machines with the same password

4 Ensured that the Guest account is activated on the XP machine

5 Disabled the firewall for the network.

6 Service-packed the XP with SP2.

7 Removed all shares on the XP and then replaced one after resetting all
user passwords.

8 Removed the requirement for users to enter passwords.

And still I get IPC$. BTW does anyone actually know what password this is?
Does M? How and where is it set?

I used to have a working network. Now thanks to XP and Microsoft, I don't. I
have spent hours trying to sort it out. Thanks a lot Microsoft!

So my appeal.

If I don't sort this soon I am going to have to go through the ordeal of
downgrading (or upgrading?) to 98 on my XP machine. The thought fills me
with horror, but the language in my study gets steadily worse and the work
gets steadily less.

What I want is a step-by-step guide to how to overcome the problem. No
tricks, just a reasoned series of steps. If anyone knows of a site or
document *please* let me know where it is. I don't want XP Pro and would not
believe that it would work even I wanted to spend a fortune for it. This
seems to be such a problem, judging by this NG, that a Nobel Peace Prize
might be in order!



Peter Scott

(e-mail address removed)

 

[Carey Holzman]

As you requested:

http://www.practicallynetworked.com/sharing/xp/addxp.htm

 

[Peter Scott]

As you requested:

http://www.practicallynetworked.com/sharing/xp/addxp.htm

Thanks for your speedy response. I'll get to it straight away and forward my
thanks when it works!

Peter Scott

 

[Hans-Georg Michna]

XP sees 98. 98 gets the dreaded IPC$ box.

Peter,

have you tried changing the password? Can't hurt to change the
computer names as well, to something no longer than 12
characters, no spaces.

Have you checked whether the username has been changed on
Windows XP? Check the real username in Administrative tools.

Have a look at http://www.michna.com/kb/wxnet.htm.

Hans-Georg

 

[GTS]

The IPO$ prompt specifically means that XP is not satisfied with the
credentials of the user attempting access. To my knowledge, no password is
ever accepted at that prompt.

The link from Carey will provide a lot of good info, but here's a few other
thoughts

- Check that the 98 computer names do not contain any spaces. This is one
know cause of this problem.

- Also , if passwords are used, sometimes XP objects to lower case from 9X
workstations. This shouldn't matter with Simple Filing Sharing with no
password on the guest account, but ....

- Try mapping the share from a 98 machine with net use \\xpbox\sharename
This is will fail, but the reported error message may have some value.

 

[Ulysses]

I recently got a new Dell 2400 Desktop computer (hey, it was free). I
immediately reformatted the hard drive and installed Win98SE (I have a
Pentium 4 that came with XPHE on it so I could see no purpose in even
turning it on other than to see if the computer worked ok). It turned out
that I could not optain all of the drivers needed to make the machine work
with 98SE. Dell only included drivers for XP. I could not find all of the
drivers on Intel's site. It appears that Dell is trying to make a computer
an appliance such as a microwave oven or dishwasher.

I have had a home network set up and running for quite some time with
Win98SE and ME. I have one laptop that I connect to my XP machine. I will
not, under any circumstances, connect my other laptops to it or the XP
network laptop until such a time that I am certain that the network is
reliable. I tried to network another laptop with my Pent 4 and it took me
about 3 weeks before I could get it to work on my other network again and I
did not change any settings on the laptop.

 

[Hans-Georg Michna]

I recently got a new Dell 2400 Desktop computer (hey, it was free). I
immediately reformatted the hard drive and installed Win98SE (I have a
Pentium 4 that came with XPHE on it so I could see no purpose in even
turning it on other than to see if the computer worked ok). It turned out
that I could not optain all of the drivers needed to make the machine work
with 98SE. Dell only included drivers for XP. I could not find all of the
drivers on Intel's site. It appears that Dell is trying to make a computer
an appliance such as a microwave oven or dishwasher.

Ulysses,

I'm trying to understand what you intended to tell us, but I am
probably too stupid. Could you please explain that again to a
dummy?

Hans-Georg

 

[Ulysses]

I'm trying to say that I had tried to network XP before so I could see no
point in trying again on my new computer.

And I would not be here now talking to you if I had sucessfully installed
Win98SE ;-)

 

[Ken Wickes [MSFT]]

Regarding your bypass security question.

First of all a "bypass security" checkbox on the Win98 machine wouldn't work
as you could just ask anybody's machine to turn off security. What you need
is a way to tell your XP machine to bypass security. This was added, more
or less, in Windows XP. It's called Simple File Sharing, it's optional on
XP Pro, and mandatory on XP Home. Since you can't just turn off access
checks in XP as a whole, it's very ingrained, Simple File Sharing just takes
any incoming file sharing requests, throws away the incoming credentials,
and uses the Guest account.

Since you have gotten as far as the IPC$ box, that suggests that you have
successfully connected to the XP machine but it didn't like your
credentials, that is it didn't like the Guest account credentials. These
should have been set up correctly but seems to drift into inconsistent
states somehow, my guess is the Network Setup Wizard failing partway through
as it is apt to do.

Luckily XP, being years newer, can tell your more about what's wrong than
can Win98. Try accessing your share from the XP box. Here's an example
from my machine (I have Simple File Sharing disabled, so I would expect this
to fail)

C:\>net use \\mymachine\myshare /user:guest ""
System error 1331 has occurred.

Logon failure: account currently disabled.

Posting back with a more specific error like the one here can help us give
better suggestions.

 

[Hans-Georg Michna]

I'm trying to say that I had tried to network XP before so I could see no
point in trying again on my new computer.

Ulysses,

why not?

Hans-Georg

 

[Ulysses]

Because I was unable to get it to work. I never managed to get ICS, File
Sharing, or even Network Wizard to work on my first XP machine. I had a few
problems getting those things to work on Win98SE and Me but I did finally
get it all to work.

 

[Hans-Georg Michna]

Because I was unable to get it to work. I never managed to get ICS, File
Sharing, or even Network Wizard to work on my first XP machine. I had a few
problems getting those things to work on Win98SE and Me but I did finally
get it all to work.

Ulysses,

usually it works, particularly when the computers are clean,
like clean of adware and clean of overly intrusive or badly made
third party software, for example.

If you feel like trying again, have a look at
http://www.michna.com/kb/wxnet.htm.

Hans-Georg

 

[Ulysses]

Thanks. I'll go study your link some more.

This is a new computer with a fresh install of XP. I installed and ran
Spybot before I did any unecessary browsing. I also installed Norton
Anti-Virus almost immediately and updated it. I'm not quite sure exactly
when the network stopped working but it seems like it was after I installed
Norton. But not immediately after. The event that I recall that seemed to
coincide with the lack of file sharing was when my daughter updated MSN
Messenger. This program has been uninstalled. Even so I was getting MSN
error messages and eventually did a system restore to get things working
again (most things anyway). Then suddenly all of my Restore Points
vanished. When I get instructions on how to set up and configure XP for
file sharing I cannot find the boxes to check and programs to run. I do not
have anything called "Manage" or a box to check for "Simple File Sharing."
Some instructions lead me to places that don't exist.


"

 

[Hans-Georg Michna]

Thanks. I'll go study your link some more.

This is a new computer with a fresh install of XP. I installed and ran
Spybot before I did any unecessary browsing. I also installed Norton
Anti-Virus almost immediately and updated it. I'm not quite sure exactly
when the network stopped working but it seems like it was after I installed
Norton. But not immediately after. The event that I recall that seemed to
coincide with the lack of file sharing was when my daughter updated MSN
Messenger. This program has been uninstalled. Even so I was getting MSN
error messages and eventually did a system restore to get things working
again (most things anyway). Then suddenly all of my Restore Points
vanished. When I get instructions on how to set up and configure XP for
file sharing I cannot find the boxes to check and programs to run. I do not
have anything called "Manage" or a box to check for "Simple File Sharing."
Some instructions lead me to places that don't exist.

Ulysses,

the first thing I would do is uninstall Norton Antivirus
entirely, after one last scan, until all problems are resolved.
Older versions are particularly problematic.

The next thing I would do is to run SpyBot again, but update its
signatures first.

Then follow the hints in http://www.michna.com/kb/wxnet.htm.

If the system is too deeply bungled, you could try a repair
installation of Windows XP before installing SP2 or of Windows
XP slipstreamed with SP2 after SP2 is already installed.

Anyway the symptoms like vanishing restore points indicate that
the system is not healthy. Is it XP Home Edition, by the way?
Home doesn't have anything called Manage and also no check box
for Simple File Sharing. It always only uses Simple File
Sharing.

Hans-Georg