FTP cannot connect

Factual Questions
1

Things have gotten a bit screwy with the network at the pulykamell household.

Last week, I finally took the plunge and bought myself a cute MacBook Pro. We decided to set up a wireless network in the house for obvious reasons.

Now, since doing so (or rather, I had my brother do this, as I don’t like dealing with networking issues), I’ve gotten a number of problems.

My main desktop is a PC running Windows XP Media. Its connected directly into the NetGear router, just as the computer from upstairs is (another PC running XP Media). The internet (Comcast Cable) is connected into the modem, which is then connected to the router. We have internet connectivity with all the computers.

So far, so good.

So, all the computers can connect to http sites. Both the Macintosh and the computer upstairs can connect to FTP sites. Both through the command prompt (or unix shell) and through a web browser.

However, the computer downstairs cannot. Command prompt gives “ftp: connect: unknown error” and FTP’ing through IE times out. Passive mode is on for IE and I even unchecked the “use folder view for FTP” as the Microsoft website suggested nothing.

Before we installed the router everything worked fine.

Here’s another point which, though not as important as my inability to FTP, may have something to do with the problem. My downstairs PC can no longer connect to my upstairs PC through the network. I have no idea what my brother did, but I can’t get the computers to see each other. My Mac can see the upstairs PC (and vice versa), but cannot see or log into the downstairs one. The only network function my downstairs PC seems able to do is browse the web.

Any ideas where to start looking?

2

A silly thing to check: make sure the Windows firewall isn’t turned on on the computer downstairs.

3

Sorry. Forgot to mention. I turned it off just to check. Still doesn’t work.

4

Or Zone Alarm. At least ZA is easier to configure for home networking than Windoze firewall is.

5

Well, it’s off so it shouldn’t matter. At any rate, nothing on my computer itself has been changed (as far as I know) from before (when the computer did FTP properly). Is it possible there’s something in the router settings fubarring everything?

6

OK. Looks like it was a Norton issue. I disabled Norton and everything worked. I reenabled it and it seems to have made the proper rules for FTP access.

I still can’t access the other computers on the home network, though, Norton Anti-Virus On or Off.

7

Well, somewhere along the way, Norton has messed with that connection as well.

At any rate, turns out the only way I can connect to the other computers is by manually typing in the name (\SERVER\FOLDER), but I can’t browse to them through the “Add a Network” utility’s Browse button. I’ll get as far as the MSHOME workgroup, but no computers will be listed under it. Oh well. At least I can access everything now.