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  • From: "Calvin Powers" <calvin AT cspowers.com>
  • To: internetworkers AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [internetworkers] Windows Networking Mystery!
  • Date: Mon, 20 Feb 2006 12:25:32 -0500

Howdy,

I'm sure this is a very basic issue, but I don't know enough about Windows Networking/NetBios to understand how to fix it. Any advice would be appreciated.

I have two computers the laptop and the desktop. For months (years?) I have had no trouble doing windows networking with them. They are both running XP. They are both in a workgroup called CSP. When I show the computers in the workgroup both machines see each other in the workgroup.

My desktop machine has a shared printer and several shared folders. My laptop has "network places" for these shares using the name \\desktop\Deskjet \\desktop\bkp etc etc. All this was working beautifully until last week.

Last week I started getting "network path not found" errors and warnings that I might not have permissions to access the resource. Both machines can get on the internet just fine so I don't think it's a TCPIP issues. Both machines can still see each other when I display the machines in the workgroup.

However, if I open up a command window and run "net view \\desktop" or "net view \\laptop" I get similar error messages.

BUT, I have discovered that if I use IP addresses instead of machine names, everything works just fine. For example I can create a share on my laptop like \\192.168.1.103\Deskjet and print to the deskjet printer just fine. This is a good temporary fix. In theory that desktop machine would always get the 103 address. But I'd much rather continue to use it by name.

I'm not naive enough to claim that "I haven't changed anything." I'm sure something ahs changed but don't know what. I do know that several microsoft updates were installed on the desktop machine recently. And I created an account for my girlfriend on that machine. But it stays logged on to my account most of the time and was logged into my account when trying to access the shares. I'm not aware of any software additions on my laptop recently. There might have been some microsoft updates pushed to it, but I don't think so.

I checked to ensure that the windows fireall was disabled on the desktop machine and the firewall was disabled on my laptop machine. (But I've used it with the laptop firewall truned on for many months, so I believe the laptop firewall is configured to let all the necessary traffic through anyway.)

Can anyone offer any advice? Is there some windows service that might have gotten disabled or blocked?



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