Networking XP Home & Pro

esuhl

I feel so stupid - I should really know how to do this but I'm tearing my hair out trying!

I have a Toshiba laptop ("tosh") and my main desktop ("mainpc") connected via a router/switch. "Tosh" is running XP Home, while "Mainpc" has XP Pro. Both can access the Internet, but neither can share files over the network.

From "Tosh", I can see "Mainpc" in Windows Explorer but if I click on it, I see the message "\\Mainpc is not accessible. You might not have permission to use this network resource...". Pinging the IP address of "Mainpc" fails.

From "Mainpc", Window Explorer doesn't see "Tosh" at all, but pinging its IP address is successful! Pinging the computer name fails, however...

Both PCs are in the same workgroup and have the guest account enabled. "Simple file sharing" is active on the XP Pro machine (though I'd prefer user-level security), but nothing I change seems to have any effect.

Does anyone have any suggestions (or even a URL of great wisdom) that might prevent me from throwing the infernal machines out of my window? I'm tempted to just install XP Pro on the laptop... but I'm not convinced that it would resolve the problem. Heeeelp!

fwor

Just an outside chance this - have you double-checked that the subnet masks are identical?

You can get weird symptoms if one is on a subnet that is a subset of the other's...

esuhl

Thanks, fwor. I'm pretty sure the subnet masks are identical (255.255.255.0) on both machines, but I'll double-check when I get home tonight.

Bagger

To OP

Your networking is fine. If you can ping from one to the other, then networking at the IP level is fine. The problem is you haven't set up proper security. You need to create an account for each of the PCs. For example, suppose John uses "Tosh" normally and Jane uses "MainPC" normally. You now need to set up an account for John on "MainPC" and one for Jane on "Tosh".

Assuming you have enabled sharing on both PCs, the next issue is the Firewall. Turn the firewalls off on both PCs and try again. If you have a router with a built in Firewall, you do not normally need the Firewall in Windows.

Good luck.

Bagger

esuhl

Cheers, Bagger. I have two users (members of the Administrators group) set up identically on both PCs - same username & password on each. The thing is I can ping from Tosh's IP from Mainpc, but not the other way round. I can't ping either PC by name.

Tosh uses the Windows firewall, while Mainpc uses Comodo v2, so I'll try disabling them briefly when I get home to see if that helps.

Thanks again for your suggestions. :-)

esuhl

Groan. I should have remembered my own mantra, "It's *always* the firewall!" Disabling it (and turning "simple file sharing" off again) fixed the problem.