There is a network that I take care of that has a couple of Windows 2000 Pro systems on it. The network has a variety of systems, Novell server, Linux firewall/mail server, but most of the workstations use Windows 98. I use Microsoft Networking/NetBEUI and file & print sharing when I want to share a hard drive or printer.
With the Windows 98 systems this is very easy. But I recently tried to share a printer that was attached to a W2000 PC and the system shows up on the list in Network Neighborhood from other PCs, every PC is in the same WorkGroup, but when you try to open it to get to the shared printer, I get a message that “the computer is unavailable, the device does not exist on the network”.
Now I need to share a printer on the second W2000 system and it gives the same error. I originally set these up years ago as stand alone systems without any thought to sharing. They access the rest of the network, Novell as well as the mail and internet through the firewall. They can access shared devices on Win98 systems as well as use printers through stand alone print servers.
Everything appears normal from the W2000 system itself. The printers shows as shared. I feel like it is a security issue, but “guests” are allowed to print to the printers.
I’m probably missing something simple, but this is the second one of these on this network acting the same way and it is pretty important to resolve this one.
Does anyone have a hint where to look?
I am no expert, but to make Windows 2000 computer resourses available to other computers (Win 95, Win 98 and Win 2000) I have had to set up a specific “User” on the Windows 2000 computer that matches the login names of the other computers (and matching passwords) for the Windows 2000 computer to allow access to the other computers. I had to do a different “User” for each different computer.
Don’t know about Guests, but when I posted this same sort of question here a year or so ago, that was the advice I got, and it worked. I don’t have the time to look for that thread now, but if you are really interested in the details you can search for it the same way I would: look up all my posts in this forum from a year or two back.
Good luck!
Having recently dealt with this while migrating to WinXP, I know of two other things to look at besides share rights.
First, disable browse master on the Win98 machines. Let the 2000 pro machines be the master browsers for the workgroup. To do this in Win98, go into network properties. In the list of installed components, look for file and print sharing, highlight it and click properties. On one of the tabs you should be able to select browse master or browsing (I don’t have a win98 machine to check right now), and with that highlighted, select disabled in the pulldown box. The drawback is that if all Win2K machines are down, the Win98 machines may not be able to find each others shares.
Second, there is a bug in Win 98 that causes it to sometimes get an incorrect subnet mask when configured through DHCP. When this happens, XP (and probably 2000) machines do not connect to the shares on the 98 machines or vice versa. The only way to resolve this is to use winipcfg to release and renew the IP address (renew alone will not work).
If it is a rights issue, it should be possible to allow guest accounts access so that you don’t have to create all those accounts on each machine. There is a very good article on how to do this in XP here. A good deal of this should also apply to Win2000.
Thanks, richardb & tourbot for the help.
I logged in remotely to a PC on the network and used three usernames that I know are on the W2000 PCs, I still can’t access either of them from the Win98 PC.
I tried the thing about the master browser on the PC I connected to and it didn’t help either. I don’t use DHCP to set the IP addresses, they are fixed, so that shouldn’t be a problem.
I read thru the article that you linked to tourbot and I think I have all of it covered. Two of the usernames I logged in with and tried to connect are administrators on the W2000 PCs so that would seem to eliminate rights problems.
I’ll dig up the thread that you referenced, richardb. Maybe there is something in it to help.
Thanks again.
Changing the master browser setting on a single 98 machine won’t have any affect at all. You have to do it on all of them. The problem with 98 is that there is no way to tell what machine it is using as a master browser (the machine which keeps the list of all available shares and computer names for the workgroup). For example, a 98 machine may think it is the master browser. Some of the other 98 machines then go to it for information about available shares. The 2000 machines, however, will use one of the 2000 machines as a master browser, and won’t register their share information with the 98 machine that thinks it is the master browser. So those 98 machines that reference the invalid duplicate master browser can’t connect to the shares on the 2000 PC’s.
On the Win2K machines, you can download and run browstat.exe to see which machine they are using as the master browser. On the 98 side, you can check each machine individually to see if it is or isn’t a master browser. To do this, go to a command prompt and type nbtstat -n. If there is anything in the list that says MSBROWSE, then that 98 machine is running as a master browser. There is no way I know of to see which machine a 98 machine is currently using as a master browser.
Another though just occured to me… If you are strictly using Netbeui, are the machines on the same LAN, or are you trying to cross a router? That won’t work with netbeui. Use IP, it is a lot easier to troubleshoot.
Also, check the last page of the article I linked for information on local security settings, especially with regard to anonymous or guest logins.
Ah, that makes sense. I have seen errors in the event log of the W2000 system that it couldn’t promote itself to the Master Browser because of the other W2000 system already claiming it. I didn’t realize that one of the Win98 systems was also claiming to be the master browser.
Changing all the Win98 PCs sounds like something that’ll have to wait till the weekend.
All the systems are using IP besides NetBEUI, plus IPX and they are on a single LAN.
A related question, why do the systems show up on the Network Neighborhood list if they aren’t registered to whichever system the Win98 PC is getting the list from?
Thanks again.
If I understand your question, it’s about the same as why does a computer show in network neighborhood or net view, but when you try to connect to it by clicking on it or with the net use command, you get a message that the computer name does not exist (or words to that effect). You’d have to ask MS why. May as well ask MS why some of their other “innovations” are so poorly designed while you’re at it.