I have three PCs on my home network. Two are Dell Dimension desktops (let’s call them DELL1 and DELL2) running Windows XP home, the third (call it XX) is a home built desktop running XP Pro. They all use DHCP off an SMC SoHo switch/router (don’t know the model number offhand, but it’s a standard inexpensive broadband router, using default configuration).
When I first set up DELL1, DELL2 and XX, they could all see each other (when I say “see” I mean that they recognize each others hostnames, and can ping, share drives, etc). Over the past couple of days (and AFAIK I haven’t changed anything on the network) DELL2 can’t see either DELL1 or XX, but XX and DELL1 can still see each other. My internet connection works fine on all machines.
I’m not running a WINS or DNS server; I’m assuming the router is responsible for mapping the host names to the IPs. I can still ping the other machines from DELL2 if I use the IP addresses, but not with host names. The only thing different between DELL2 and the other machines is that I turn it off when I’m not using it, but DELL1 and XX are on 24/7. I have also sometimes experienced the same problem when connecting my laptop (also running XP home) to the network - it doesn’t recognize the other hostnames, but works using the IP address.
Now that I think about it for a minute, it’s a D-Link router, not an SMC. But previously, when I was using a Linksys BEFSR-41 router (replaced for unrelated reasons), I experieced the same issue.
I was under the impression that XP Home was crippleware with regards to being able to log into networks and share resources and whatnot. I would have guessed that the two Home boxes would at best be able to see the XX box, but not each other, and that possibly the XX box would not be able to see either of the other two – but that’s not what you report.
How are you defining the network, and how are the two Home boxes able to join it?
Since you’re not using WINS or DNS, name resolution is done by NetBIOS broadcasts, not by the router. Perhaps NBT (NetBIOS on TCP/IP) is not running on DELL2… On Win2K (should be the same on XP) I think the service is called “TCP/IP-NetBIOS Helper” - see Control Panel/Administrative Tools/Services.
If all else fails you can fix the name resolution problem by setting all the machines to use static IPs and adding entries to the HOSTS file on each one.
Open c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts in Notepad. Add lines to the bottom with the IP address and name of each PC. It should look something like this:
127.0.0.1 localhost
192.168.0.2 DELL1
192.168.0.3 DELL2
192.168.0.4 XX
This will load into the DNS cache when the machine boots, so it will always be able to resolve those names. Just remember to edit the files if you change the IPs of any of the machines.
My limited experience with XP home has produced smooth networking with only one hassle (the one Mangetout mentioned): a friend inadvertently invoked a firewall on his XP Home machine, and we spent a couple of hours trying to guess why things weren’t working (error messages gave no clues).
Thanks for the responses so far, guys. I considered going the static route [NPI], but that still won’t help with the laptop, since I also connect that to my work network, which uses a different subnet. I do not have a software firewall, just the SOHO router.
XP home is crippled in that it cannot join NT (Win2K, etc) domains, similar to how the old DOS-based OSes (Win-95 through Me) worked, but networking by itself works fine. It’s also missing other things (for example, you can’t connect to it using Remote Desktop, but you can use the remote desktop client to connect to other machines).
I’m not sure what you mean by “how are you defining the network”. I don’t have an NT domain, they may or may not all be in the same workgroup (I believe they are, but it shouldn’t affect if if they aren’t, should it?). I used the default configuration for pretty much all network configuration on all machines. I can check for the NBT service on DELL2, I guess. Can anyone think of anything else?