XP and Vsta on problem on home wireless network

[goo_mason]

Got a new Vista laptop on the work's Home Computing scheme yesterday, and spent from 12 - 10.30 trying to get it and my XP PC to see each other on my home network.

Tried every suggested fix and solution I could find on the web to no avail. At one point, the XP machine could see the Vista one and I could access the Vista Public folders from it, but conversely the Vista machine was still unable to see the XP one. Next time I looked, XP had lost sight of Vista again. Sigh.

At a push, I managed to get the Vista machine to see the music shared on the XP machine's WMP11 by turning on the WMP network share service.

The XP machine happily sees the old brick P2 laptop running XP that I'd previously used.

Has anyone had this issue and managed to actually resolve it successfully ? I've had an IT Professional tell me he just uses a portable HD to transfer data as he can't get XP and Vista to play on his home network....

 

[ACS]

Are all the PC's part of the same workgroup?

Start>Control Panel>System>Computer Name

Try switching the firewall off on all internal computers, ie all those behind the router.

 

[Carwash]

When you say they can't 'see each other' on the network do you mean that there is actually no routeable path between the machines? Or are you just having trouble mounting an SMB share from one to the other? I presume you've checked the logs for evidence of a fault?

 

[goo_mason]

Are all the PC's part of the same workgroup?

Start>Control Panel>System>Computer Name

Cheers SB.

Yes, that was the first change I made after consulting the web.

Same workgroup name on both machines, network changed to Private, required firewall ports checked and opened, XP folders correctly set for network sharing, a few registry settings confirmed as being correct.

The built-in firewall on the router has been disabled too (it's not required as I have software firewalls on my machines).

I briefly stopped the software firewalls and confirmed that they weren't blocking things up.

I don't (and never have had) Norton on either machine.

XP is running SP3, Vista is 64bit.

Don't know if there's anything else left to try.

 

[ACS]

What about the HDD file formats. Are they all NTFS because FAT32 and NTFS really do not accept one another.

 

[ACS]

Your older PC's wll be 32bit and your new one is 64bit. Could this be the issue? I do not have a great deal of experience with 32 - 64 bit sharing but if you have checked everything else...............

 

[ACS]

Found on a forum archive:

The fact that one OS is 32-bit and the other is 64-bit is
irrelevant when it comes to file sharing over the network. Since I have no
idea what "the usual avenues" are and what you've tried, here are general
network sharing troubleshooting steps. Not everything may be applicable to your situation, so just take the bits that are. It may look daunting, but
if you follow the steps at the links and suggestions below systematically
and calmly, you will have no difficulty in setting up your sharing.

Excellent, thorough, yet easy to understand article about File/Printer
Sharing in Vista. Includes details about sharing printers as well as files
and folders:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/l.../bb727037.aspx

For XP, start by running the Network Setup Wizard on all machines (see
caveat in Item A below).

Problems sharing files between computers on a network are generally caused
by 1) a misconfigured firewall or overlooked firewall (including a stateful
firewall in a VPN); or 2) inadvertently running two firewalls such as the
built-in Windows Firewall and a third-party firewall; and/or 3) not having
identical user accounts and passwords on all Workgroup machines; 4) trying
to create shares where the operating system does not permit it.

A. Configure firewalls on all machines to allow the Local Area Network (LAN)
traffic as trusted. With Windows Firewall, this means allowing File/Printer
Sharing on the Exceptions tab. Normally running the Network Setup Wizard on
XP will take care of this for those machines.The only "gotcha" is that this
will turn on the XPSP2 Windows Firewall. If you aren't running a
third-party firewall or have an antivirus/security program with its own
firewall component, then you're fine. With third-party firewalls, I
usually configure the LAN allowance with an IP range. Ex. would be
192.168.1.0-192.168.1.254. Obviously you would substitute your correct
subnet. Refer to any third party security program's Help or user forums for
how to properly configure its firewall. Do not run more than one firewall.
DO NOT TURN OFF FIREWALLS; CONFIGURE THEM CORRECTLY.

B. For ease of organization, put all computers in the same Workgroup. This
is done from the System applet in Control Panel, Computer Name tab.

C. Create matching user accounts and passwords on all machines. You do not
need to be logged into the same account on all machines and the passwords
assigned to each user account can be different; the accounts/passwords just
need to exist and match on all machines. DO NOT NEGLECT TO CREATE
PASSWORDS, EVEN IF ONLY SIMPLE ONES. If you wish a machine to boot directly
to the Desktop (into one particular user's account) for convenience, you
can do this. The instructions at this link work for both XP and Vista:

Configure Windows to Automatically Login (MVP Ramesh) -
http://windowsxp.mvps.org/Autologon.htm

D. If one or more of the computers is XP Pro or Media Center, turn off
Simple File Sharing (Folder Options>View tab).

E. Create shares as desired. XP Home does not permit sharing of users' home
directories or Program Files, but you can share folders inside those
directories. A better choice is to simply use the Shared Documents folder.
See the first link above for details about Vista sharing.

 

[ACS]

That should keep you out of mischief for as while

 

[goo_mason]

Cheers again - I've actually done all of those apart from C, as I had it on good authority that logins for your PC have nothing at all to do with networking.

Still no success. I noticed last night that each machine will see a little of the other (XP sees the shared Public folder on Vista, allowing me to access what's in there, and Vista sees the WMP11 shared media), but only intermittently. That would confirm that XP/ Vista networking is at best flaky; I wish Microsoft would do something about it. People seem to have been griping about it since Vista was released.

 

[ACS]

Have you considered a rights and permissions problem? To be honest without seeing it in action (or not as the case may be) its a little difficult to help as you appear to have done all the 'normal' troubleshooting bits and bobs.

Are you allowing your router to doll out the IP addresses via DCHP? Why not try some static addressing within the same subnet mask. Switch off the DCHP at the router that may remove some of the flakelyness. It a long shot but may be worth a punt.

 

[Willow]

I had problems with my network (XP) and bought some online software called network magic, it worked a treat and when we added a Vista machine no problems occurred. You can tria lthe software so if it doesn't work you haven't wasted your money it was around £18 I think and I wished I had gotten it before spending hours fiddling to sort it all out.

 

[fossyant]

Check the IP's of each PC - our main PC (XP) has it's firewall set to accept the laptop's (Vista) IP address. But it can only access shared folders - you have to share them - e.g. we share the media folder with the laptop. I've turned off the Windows Media Sharing as it sucks resources, and we don't need it - just share the necessary folders.

 

[goo_mason]

Check the IP's of each PC - our main PC (XP) has it's firewall set to accept the laptop's (Vista) IP address. But it can only access shared folders - you have to share them - e.g. we share the media folder with the laptop. I've turned off the Windows Media Sharing as it sucks resources, and we don't need it - just share the necessary folders.

Cheers - I'll look into that, though I did set both firewalls to allow all for a short time and they still didn't see each other.

Yep - Windows media share being on isn't a good idea; I've have it disabled for years but thought I'd enable it to see what happened.

The folders on the XP machine have been set to share for a couple of years, and I checked they were still sharing and on the correct workgroup.

 

[goo_mason]

I had problems with my network (XP) and bought some online software called network magic, it worked a treat and when we added a Vista machine no problems occurred. You can tria lthe software so if it doesn't work you haven't wasted your money it was around £18 I think and I wished I had gotten it before spending hours fiddling to sort it all out.

Willow - I could kiss you !!! It works, no problems and no hassle at all. What a genius product - like you, I wish I'd known about it before I wasted the best part of two days of my life gittering about with it.

Thank you

 

[ACS]

Willow - I could kiss you !!! It works, no problems and no hassle at all. What a genius product - like you, I wish I'd known about it before I wasted the best part of two days of my life gittering about with it.

Thank you

Can you tell what this application did to your set up? Sorry its the engineer in me, the problem is fixed great, but how did it fix it? Any ideas