File sharing problem on wireless network.

tomstickland · 14 December 2005 at 12:27AM

What a night!
The wireless card for the old PC arrived so I installed it. After a bit of fiddling around with the aerials then I got a decent 70% signal and it was obviously connecting up with the main wireless modem/router. Which was nice.

I then spent a few hours of random wizard running, box clicking, trial running and general randomness until I finally managed to get Internerd explorer to run off the LAN without trying to dial anything up.

I think the key thing was running the network wizard on both machines and configuring for the middle option (all computers connected to a residential gateway) or similar.

Then I noticed that shared printers were available.

I have a problem with shared directories though.
On the new machine I can see the shared folder for both itself and the old machine. They both work fine.

On the old machine I can only see its shared folder. If I go "explore, entire network, windows network, mshome" then I can see the new machine (called Ernie). However, if I click on this then it says "\\Ernie is not available. You might not have permission to use this network path. Contact the administrator of this server." or something like that.

So it looks like I need to configure the permissions on the new machine so that the old one is allowed to connect to it. I've had a look round but can't find much info on this. Basically, I'm tired now, so I'll probably be able to work it out tomorrow, but I'd like a few hints to speed things up.

On the plus side, I now have a Broadband connection on the old machine and it's fast. All for the price of the £19.99 wireless card.

Chippy_Minton · 14 December 2005 at 1:46AM

Can both machines ping each other, both by name and IP address?

Which OSes are involved?

tomstickland · 14 December 2005 at 1:49AM

Both run Win XP.
I've not tried pinging.
New machine can access old machine.
Old machine cannot access new machine.
How do I find the IP address for the machines?
How do I ping (is it in accessories, network tools or similar)?

Chippy_Minton · 14 December 2005 at 2:02AM

XP - Home or Pro?

To find out IP address, open a command prompt (Start - Run - type in cmd and press return) and type ipconfig and press return. For example:

C:\WINDOWS\system32>ipconfig

Windows IP Configuration

Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection:

Connection-specific DNS Suffix . :
IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.6
Subnet Mask . . . . . . . . . . . : 255.255.255.0
Default Gateway . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.0.1

IP Address is the address of the computer and default gateway is the address of the router.

Do the ipconfig on both computers. They should have same default gateway but different IP addresses.

From a command prompt on the old computer, ping Ernie's IP address and name as follows:

ping <Ernie ip address>

e.g. ping 192.168.0.4

ping <computer Ernie name>

e.g. ping Ernie

Do the equivalent on Ernie.

Both pings should return 4 success replies if all's working OK.

tomstickland · 14 December 2005 at 2:07AM

OK, thanks, I'll do that.

tomstickland · 14 December 2005 at 2:12AM

OK,
New machine, Ernie:
IP add: 192.168.2.2
Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0
Def Gateway: 192.168.2.1

Old machine
IP add: 169.254.154.253
Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0
Def Gateway: nothing

That looks suspicious eh?!

tomstickland · 14 December 2005 at 2:16AM

Ping from Ernie to old machine: request timed out

Ping from old machine to Ernie: destination host unreachable

Using direct names did not work.

tomstickland · 14 December 2005 at 2:17AM

On Ernie: My network places, Shared Docs on old machine, that allows me to edit the files on the other machine and it works.

Chippy_Minton · 14 December 2005 at 1:41PM

The 169.x.x.x address is part of the problem, though I don't know why you were able to edit files. It indicates that communication with the DHCP server in the router has failed and Windows has assigned a default IP address. The IP address should be 192.168.2.x

From a command prompt, type:

ipconfig /release

and then:

ipconfig /renew

Type ipconfig again and check the IP address assigned.

Other things to do:

1 In Control Panel - Network Connections, right-click Wireless Network Connection, select Properties. On General tab, ensure Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) in list of items is ticked. Select it then click Properties. Make sure Obtain IP address automatically and Obtain DNS server address automatically are selected.

2. Disable any software firewalls for now.

3. If you've enabled any aspect of wireless security on the router disable it for now.

4. Run the Network Setup Wizard again on both machines.

Until you get the 169 address fixed and both computers can ping each other, shared files and folders won't work.

tomstickland · 14 December 2005 at 2:17PM

OK, I'll do that tonight. Basically I'll turn all security off, disconnect phone line, turn all firewalls off etc and then type your commands above, and then rerun network setup wizard etc. Keep fiddling until it works.
I thought this was plug and play!