Need help with home netwok

[madmaniakid]

Hi people, I have a problem with my home network.
I have a Pc running Win XP home ed and a Laptop running Win XP pro.
The Pc is hard wired to the router & the Laptop has a wireless connection to the router.
Both view the internet & retreive email fine, but i have a problem sharing files,
The Pc has a network drive mapped with the Laptop and I can view it's files ok,
but if i try to map a network drive from the Laptop to the Pc i can see the network click the expand + i can view the Pc but when i click the expand + nothing comes up even though i have set shared folders and have sharing active.

Can anyone throw some idea's my way i'm really stuck on this one.

[chinny]

Have you got any firewalls running on the PC end of it i.e. XP , Zonealarm, Kerio etc. Also check that the server service is started.

[madmaniakid]

Yes the server service is running, and i am using a firewall but even if i disable it i still can't get a connection

[Splash]

what kind of size of share is this? When opening a share it can sometimes take some time for Windows to fully enumerate the share. Are both machines part of the same workgroup? Personally I find the permissions structure for simple file sharing a pain, so do full sharing...

[madmaniakid]

UPDATE: I now have 3 Computers on my network the 3rd is a PC wirelessly connected running XP home ed. The Main PC can link to both the laptop and 3rd PC and both the laptop and 3rd PC can link together but neither of them can link to the main PC.

As to the file size, just the standard folders that are within the shared folder i.e shared music, pictures, videos which are all empty.

And yes all computers are all part of the same workgroup.

Unfortunately only the laptop with XP Pro has the option for simple or advanced sharing. (just to note all systems are structured FAT32)

[Fidley]

Right i'm confused, but can you ping the main machine from the other pcs?

PS: Start> Run> cmd

Type 'ping xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx' replace the x's with the ip of each machine in turn.
ipconfig at the command prompt will give you the ip of the machine you're on.

[chinny]

The other thing you could try is to get to the default administrative shares on the machine
i.e. \\192.168.0.1\c$ - as with the ping tests make sure that you disable any firewalls before running test. What were the results of the pings?
As a side note some AV software can disable access to shares e.g. McAfee so also worth checking that.

[madmaniakid]

Hi yes all machines can ping to the main PC.

i tried pinging 192.168.2.2\c$ as chinny suggested but it comes up with could not find host 192.168.2.2/c$

[Fidley]

Errrm don't think you can ping a share . What you need to do is type that into the windows explorer address bar.

[madmaniakid]

Hi sorry about that, lol.

I've tried that but it results in the standard 'page cannot be found' showing up

[Fidley]

Did you try in internet explorer, or windows explorer?

EDIT: Actually just tried and i don't think it matters tbh.

[dragon546]

Try and create an account on your xp pro machine for your home machine so when you browse the share on your Desktop it will prompt you for a login. Login and see if the files are visible. XP pro has a lot more network security features inside it than home.

[Fidley]

Or bail out completely and just run the network setup wizard

[dragon546]

Network wiz does not always work but hey no harm in trying.

[Fidley]

Network wiz does not always work but hey no harm in trying.

Isn't that the case with most of m$'s software, esp networking win98- not entirely relivant here i know. Oh the fun!

/off topic

[dragon546]

Isn't that the case with most of m$'s software, esp networking win98- not entirely relivant here i know. Oh the fun!

/off topic

Tried a bit of nix meself but (just too damn lazy to commit to it, also could not achieve what I wanted it for).

/off topic