I’ve got a right bastard of a problem that I’m about to give up on, and I’m hoping somebody here knows what’s up…
I’ve got two machines, one running Windows 2000 SP4 and one running XP Home with SP2, both with all Windows updates. I’m trying to get file sharing working between them and I’m having no luck at all.
File and Printer sharing is installed on both machines’ Local Area Connection (there’s only one NIC per computer.) They both have the same workgroup name and different computer names. User accounts for each computer’s user are set up on the other machine, with full admin privileges. I have each user’s desktop folder shared with the Administrators group having access. The idea here is that I want to be able to transfer files back and forth from one desktop to the other.
For the purposes of testing, both machines have their firewalls turned off. They can both ping one another, but when I try to navigate to the other computer using My Network Places I can see my workgroup name, but when I click it the only computer I see is the one I’m using. The other computer doesn’t appear. If I try to navigate directly to it (by typing \ComputerX into the address bar) I just get an error message to the effect of “Windows cannot find \ComputerX. Please check the spelling and try again.”
I’ve put together Windows networks a brazillian times and I’ve never run into this. The Googles, they do nothing. This is, however, the first time I’ve messed with XP Home so I’m thinking that might be the wrench in my monkey.
Ninjas have kidnapped my workgroup! Are you a bad enough dude to rescue it?
Have you tried running the network wizard and saved the file to a USB drive then using that to setup the network on the other end.
I have done this a few times when I was stumped…probably did something silly like a typo in one workgroup name or something. Other than that, not sure, sounds like you have a handle on all the basics.
Have you tried just going bare ass naked share the whole C drive and see if that opens it up? my computer - R click on C drive - properties - sharing tab - select “just share my drive I know the risks” then “allow users to change my files”
Just remember to unshare it later…your machine is basically naked while you do this.
The only other thing I could think of is to set up a passworded user account on the machine and see if it prompts you for a password. IF it does, you should be in like flynn. If not, you have something weird going on.
XP home wont matter unless you are dealing with a network over 5 machines.
I thought of that. Just to be sure it wasn’t some bizarro dependency issue I set every service on both machines to Automatic. Still no dice.
It isn’t supposed to be this hard. Sometimes I wonder if there isn’t a little registry entry hidden somewhere with a name like BrokeAssNetworkInterval that you have to change to zero.
I still don’t know what the hell the problem is, but setting up shortcuts with the direct IP addresses did the trick. I’m just gonna go static all the way and turn my DHCP server off until the next LAN party.
