I am not necessarily looking for a comprehensive answer in this forum but am hoping for pointers to resources I can use. The Microsoft support site has actually too much information that I have not been able to narrow it down to my specific problem.
I have set up a wireless home network but cannot figure out how to get two computers to be visible to each other.
I have cable broadband. I am using a Toshiba PCX5000, which is an integrated cable modem, access point, wireless router. My connections to the Internet are fine. I have installed NetBIOS clients on two machines.
One is a desktop running W98SE. I marked a folder as shared. When I bring up Network Neighborhood, it shows the network domain for the wireless router, it shows itself as a node, and it shows its own shared folder.
The other is a laptop running W2K Pro. When I go to My Network Places (who thought that up on a system called “Professional”?) and click on Entire Network, and then click on NetWare or Compatible Network, I get a dialog box that says, “Unable to browse the network. The network path was not found.” Neither can I get properties for this network.
The problem seems to be with the W2K box but I’m running around in circles trying to figure out what else I need to configure. Unfortunately Toshiba’s documentation focuses on the cable Internet connection and does not have a word about doing this type of thing.
Well, the first thing that sticks out is that you probably shouldn’t be clicking the “netware or compatible” network. There should be another one for a Windows based network.
Microsoft long ago wanted to “merge” the NT and 9.x lines into a single operating sytem. “Merge” is really the wrong word, what they really wanted to do was kill off 9.x and force everyone to NT. 2000 was supposed to do exactly that. The problem was that a lot of popular software (particularly games) wouldn’t run under 2000. So, Microsoft changed strategies, windows 2000 became the “business” operating system, and Windows ME was born.
Besides the cutesy “My Network Places”, you can see other remnants of Microsoft’s strategy in the multimedia apps bundled with 2000. They are also geared towards the home user in look and feel and are very similar to what users were running on 98 computers (like real player).
By the time XP came along, software developers had been writing 2000 compatible code for long enough that “most” popular software would run under XP, and the 9.x line was killed off for good.
Novell networks were very common in the days of windows 3.1 but are fairly rare these days. Unless you have some reason to access a novell network I would get rid of that out of your configuration. I have a hunch that whoever set up the computer accidentally clicked on novell network instead of microsoft network. Click on start->settings->network and dial up connections, then right click on the network in question and select “properties.” Use install and uninstall so that you end up with Client for Microsoft Networks, and File and printer sharing for microsoft networks. You don’t need anything else there (except of course for the protocol, which is probably TCP/IP).
Make sure you have the security enabled on the wireless equipment. Otherwise your neighbor or any local hacker may have an easy way to get into your system.
The computers have to belong to the same workgroup.I would also check each computer to make sure they are in the same IP address network. Home networks usually use the 192.XXX.XXX.XXX or the 164.XXX.XXX.XXX network numbers.
Can you ping the router from the win2k box? Its probably 192.168.1.1 (check the router info). If you can’t do that, can you ping yourself? To ping your own NIC its 127.1.1.1 . Do you have a firewall running on the laptop?
Then make sure “Client for Microsoft Networks” is installed. If not, install it.
Make sure the TCP/IP protocol is installed. If not, install it.
Make sure the adapters of each PC are bound to the TCP/IP protocol (tick the option in the properties of each adapter, if not already ticked)
Go to the properties of the TCP/IP (for each adapter you want to use) and select the following on each comp:
“Obtain IP address automatically”
“Detect connection to network media”
“Use DHCP for WINS resolution”
“Disable DNS”
“Bindings: Client for MS Networks, File and Printer Sharing”
It’s quite likely that each of the comps are configured to IP addresses on different subnets.
Confirm IP address by doing this :
On the Win98 comp, go to start/run and type winipcfg
On the Win2000 comp go to start/run type command and then in the DOS window type ipconfig /all
The IP addresses would be in the form of XXX.YYY.ZZZ.AA
If the IP addresses of both comps have the same XXX.YYY they should be able to see each other. Make sure File and Printer sharing is enabled on both. Then right click your hard drives and enable sharing.
To provide a little closure here, that was the problem, but it gets interesting. My laptop is a company computer. I don’t know as much about W2K as I thought. I reconfigured it to use a workgroup, and then when I rebooted I could no longer login. That’s because I removed the computer from the MS network domain at work by switching to a workgroup, and I didn’t realize that the user was linked to the domain, rather than to the box itself. The IT support people were slightly irritated but fixed it and and removed my administrator priveleges
He probably did, but 127.1.1.1 works too. So does 127.255.255.254. Give it a try. The whole Class A network is reserved for loopback. IIRC, it’s not this way in IPv6 because it’s a waste of addresses.
