Network Notwork!

[zcacogp]

Chaps,

Me again. Sorry. I seem to be taking up quite a lot of time of you computer boffins here recently.

I have a small home network. Lappie running XP pro, desktop with Win2000.

Hooked up via a switch and wireless access point and also connected into a modem/router.

Both machines run fine. The laptop will talk to the wireless access point fine, and attach to the internet fine. The desktop ditto.

However, I cannot get the laptop to talk to the desktop at all. I used to be able to see all the desktop drives, and share information across without any problems. I can't remember when this stopped working, but it certainly won't work now.

The workgroups are the same name, the machines all connect (they will all share the internet connection fine), you can "Ping" one machine from another (successfully), there are exceptions set up in the firewalls to allow each to see each other, the drives are set to "Shared" with access allowed to all.

And yet, when (on the laptop) you open windows explorer and go to "My network places > Entire Network > Microsoft Windows Network > 51SR (workgroup name)", you get the error message "51Sr is not accessible. You might not have permission to use this network resource. Contact the administrator of this erver to find out if you have access permissions. The server is not configured for transactions."

Anyone any ideas?

Thanks, as usual ... and apologies for numptyness.


Oli.

[bogie]

in short if you can ping the other machines your 'network' is working fine ..the problem is with the configuration of the Windows machines an OS related.

There some good guides out there on the web - start from scratch, get rid of any shares etc and follow the windows networking wizards - could be anything like names, permissions, firewalls on each PC etc..

[plasticpig]

Ah you have a nietwork ass the Russians would say.

Look in the event log. If you have a 2011 event id then you need to increase the irpstacksize in the registry.

[aldi]

You could try temporarily disabling the firewalls on the laptop & destop and rebooting?

[zcacogp]

bogie said:

in short if you can ping the other machines your 'network' is working fine ... could be anything like firewalls on each PC etc..

I thought that if it could "Ping", the firewall must be OK? (Bit of a moot point actually, as I have tried it with the firewalls all turned off, and still no joy. Not such a risky biz, as there is another firewall in the router ...)

plasticpig said:

Ah you have a nietwork ass the Russians would say.

Really? Never knew that!

plasticpig said:

Look in the event log. If you have a 2011 event id then you need to increase the irpstacksize in the registry.

Where is the event log? And what is the irpstacksize?

Thanks again for your help.


Oli.

[plasticpig]

event log is in computer management see

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en

I think the 2011 will appear in the system log.

If you find it you need to do this:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN

[zcacogp]

plasticpig said:

event log is in computer management see http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en I think the 2011 will appear in the system log. If you find it you need to do this: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN

PlasticPig - Thanks. I am just doing a full virus scan on both machines to ensure that things are as clean as they appear to be, and then I'll try looking in the system log.

(Blimey - virus scans take some time when there are large disks and slow processors!)


Oli.

[aldi]

A firewall can (and usually is) set to block some servies and not others - your machine has 65535 'ports' on each IP address, and when you connect to another IP address you connect to a specific port at that address not just the address full stop. Firewalls can block some ports and allow others. e.g port 80 is http traffic, 110 is pop3 for email, 688x usually for bittorrent and 138, 139, 445 and a few others for windows file sharing. So the upshot is that it can allow pings but nothing else if it has been so configured. It could also disallow pings but allow something else... Zonealarm also has the feature whereby it can control what programs on the PC can access the network. So you can set internet explorer to be able to connect out but if dodgyspyware.exe tries to connect out it will know the difference, even if they'be both untimatley trying to do the same thing i.e. connect to a random website.

As for the file sharing problem, it's worth a shot to try uninstalling, rebooting & reinstalling the client for MS networks and file & print sharing from the network connection properties, and make sure that 'enable netbios' is selected in the TCP/IP advanced properties. Bear in mind also that sometimes the machines need to be on for a few minutes before the workgroup browsing biz sorts it's self out. And its worth checking that is XP firewall is off if you're also using zonealarm.

Hope this helps.

[zcacogp]

aldi said:

A firewall can (and usually is) set to block some servies and not others - your machine has 65535 'ports' on each IP address, and when you connect to another IP address you connect to a specific port at that address not just the address full stop. Firewalls can block some ports and allow others. e.g port 80 is http traffic, 110 is pop3 for email, 688x usually for bittorrent and 138, 139, 445 and a few others for windows file sharing. So the upshot is that it can allow pings but nothing else if it has been so configured. It could also disallow pings but allow something else... Zonealarm also has the feature whereby it can control what programs on the PC can access the network. So you can set internet explorer to be able to connect out but if dodgyspyware.exe tries to connect out it will know the difference, even if they'be both untimatley trying to do the same thing i.e. connect to a random website.

OK, that's interesting, thanks. As it is, I am using Sygate Personal Firewall, and simply have allowed access to all machines from 192.168.1.1-192.168.1.9, which covers all the IP addresses on the local network. I am assuming this should allow all ports at these addresses to have free access?

aldi said:

As for the file sharing problem, it's worth a shot to try uninstalling, rebooting & reinstalling the client for MS networks and file & print sharing from the network connection properties

How do I do that? I don't know how to seperate the client for MS networks from windows? As in, I didn't know that there was seperate client software on there.

aldi said:

make sure that 'enable netbios' is selected in the TCP/IP advanced properties.

Didn't know this was relevant ... will go and check it.

aldi said:

Bear in mind also that sometimes the machines need to be on for a few minutes before the workgroup browsing biz sorts it's self out. And its worth checking that is XP firewall is off if you're also using zonealarm.

OK, thanks. Not using zonealarm, so not a problem there. Didn't know about the waiting a few minutes thing, so thanks for that.

aldi said:

Hope this helps.

I'm sure it will - thanks.


Oli.

[zcacogp]

Chaps,

Once again, I throw myself upon the anvil of Windows, and it breaks me. Once again, I wonder what branch of logic Bill Gates works with, and once again I curse him, his children, his childrens children, the day he was born and the place he was conceived.

In desperation I changed every setting on the network arrangement. No joy. Until I changed the workgroup name. No longer "51SR" (our address), but now "Wibble".

And it works fine!



Sodding thing.

Thanks very much for your input. Now, where did Saturday go?


Oli.

>> Edited by zcacogp on Saturday 28th January 17:06

[docevi1]

the other thing to say is that you need to run "netsetup.exe" on any box which is non XP...

When you run it on your XP box you get asked if you'd like to make a floppy - usually that works.

[aldi]

Glad you're sorted now!

zcacogp said:

OK, that's interesting, thanks. As it is, I am using Sygate Personal Firewall, and simply have allowed access to all machines from 192.168.1.1-192.168.1.9, which covers all the IP addresses on the local network. I am assuming this should allow all ports at these addresses to have free access?

Yes usually!

zcacogp said:

How do I do that? I don't know how to seperate the client for MS networks from windows? As in, I didn't know that there was seperate client software on there.

If you go to control pannel, network connections, right click on the connection you're interested in and choose properties then you should see the Client For... TCP... and File & Print... in the list. You can't uninstall TCP/IP easily but if you highlight the other two you should be able to click uninstall to uninstall them, and install to install them again. Its worth a shot sometimes but looks like you don't need to this time!