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Just a little tale of woe!

I have spent the whole weekend trying to get a network working and now I'm giving up and saying that it is bloody impossible.

I have two computers upstairs wired into a cable router and a wireless laptop downstairs, all of them are now sharing the internet and that works fine, really fast, straight out of the box. So far, so good.

Now to set up the networking of files and printer I thought, bad idea, the two wired ones took a short while but eventually started playing ball and can share files etc but the one that I really want to share files with is the laptop one and that of course is the ?#%$*^! one that will not in anyway work.

Now, what is the bloody point of selling a router which is wireless and wired if it won't do both at the same time.

So, I search the web and there are hundreds of solutions which of course don't work including microsoft's.

I am so sick to death of networking (notworking).

Guess I will be putting my files onto a memory card and transporting them that way, like I used too.

Anyway, thank god it is nearly monday so that I can go back to work and not have to try any networking for half a day.

http://www.alternate.nl/html/product/de ... hData=true

That's what a lazy bastard like me would do.
If I was rich I would send you one...

Get saving then and send me one later in the year, either that or I'll run a wire through the floor upstairs, out through the ceiling and plug it into the laptop.

Is this a file sharing level issue or is it failing at a more fundamental level.

What are the IP addresses and Default GW's of the three systems?
What happens when you ping from each to the other? (Try a tracert -d <IP> to see if they are trying to hop out onto the net to reach eachother)
What's the OS's? (XP home ed has different network setup for sharing and XP pro often has the simple mode sharing turned on instead if it's not on a domain)

as well as pdwyer's suggestions, check that your firewalls aren't blocking the connection between your wired pc's and your laptop (check both your laptop and the wired pc's) - I'm always forgetting to set mine when I set up a new 'puter...

citystate wrote:as well as pdwyer's suggestions, check that your firewalls aren't blocking the connection between your wired pc's and your laptop (check both your laptop and the wired pc's) - I'm always forgetting to set mine when I set up a new 'puter...

I kept forgetting to do this too. My wife's machine (wired) and my daughter's (wireless) both run zonelarm and it shows a local and an internet network in the setup. If I choose "This subnet belongs to the internet zone", all filesharing works fine.

I don't setup or play with their machines more than once a year and I keep forgetting this every time.

If the wired computers are connected directly to the cable router and the 'wireless' network is via a seperate wireless router you have a bridge situation and it will not be 'easy' to connect them all.

I had this situation and solved it by plugging the wireless router into the cable router (as usual) but then plugging all the PC's into the wireless router - most wireless routers will support multiple connections and if you need more you can connect them via a hub or switch. Just make sure you don't attempt to mix/match cable router and wireless router pc connections.

I don't know if this situation applies to you or not. Just thought I'd share my experience. I was also running XP Pro which is a little more network friendly.

Good luck with the set-up.

Want a nightmare - try it with Win 98:)

cheers

This is the setup,

Cable modem plugged into a Netgear wnr834b router which has 4 wired access ports and also wireless.

Computer1 plugged into router by wire, running XP home,
Computer2 plugged into router by wire, running XP pro,
Computer3 connected to router by wireless, also XP Pro,

All three sharing the internet fine.

The two wired PC's can network together fine but the wireless one has yet to work even though I have at one point had computer1 showing all three computers on the network, computer2 only showing two (not the wireless one) and computer3 only showing one (itself).

I can't ping between any of the computers but I assumed that was the router blocking the access as I can ping the router from any of the machines and the internet sharing is working and of course computer1 and 2 are networking.

I have installed just about every protocol I can find, even netbuie or whatever it was called, I have windows firewall off as I have zonealarm and it hasn't kicked up a fuss so unless it is blocking the communication I don't have a clue.

If it is zonealarm then it is strange that computer1 and 2 are working and not 3 but then we are talking computers here and if something obscure can go wrong then it will.

Anyway I'm just going to go back to moving files with a usb card and not think about networking again, the shared internet was the main thing, just seems a shame to have a connection between the computers of 100mbit and then only ever push 2mbit down it.

Thanks for all the helpful advice though.

Frustrating, no doubt.

I learned the hard way that XP Home and XP Pro do things a bit differently from each other. And sometimes they are difficult to get to recognize each other.

Here is something to try... assuming your have TCP/IP networking installed.

At each machine, remove file/printer sharing. Sometimes on XP Home this will take several minutes to accomplish.

Then make absolutely certain that you have defined the WORKGROUP name identical on each system. I suggest using only upper case letters on each machine. The two XP versions handle mixed cases somewhat differently in my experience and one of them gets really confused if there is an embedded space in the workgroup name.

After getting the workgroup name identical, be sure to reboot each system.

Then, go back and setup up file sharing on each machine and reboot again. Oddly, XP Home can mark the files/folders for sharing very rapidly as opposed to marking them unshared.

I hope that will help you and that I haven't left out a step. It has been a while since I dealt with a similar situation.

Thanks, the thing is the two computers that communicate are running xp pro and xp home between them so the network is presumably ok, it's just the wireless part trying to join the network which is the problem.

I think it may be zonealarm stopping the laptop getting through but as yet I can't get anywhere with it.

make sure the wireless machine sits in teh same subnet aswell.

aka 192.168.0.x or whatever you use.
often thats the problem.

If all are in the same subnet then check the wireless router to bridge port 139 from and to the wireless.

Thalius

IP's and GW's please

If you can ping the router from the three systems then I'm assuming they see the same IP as the router. Can you ping the systems from the router? That will tell you if it's a routing/blocking issue on the router or a blocking issue on the PC

What does a tracert -d tell you?

If for a ping you get "Response timed out" that doesn't tell you what's happening with the router. A tracert will tell you if it's jumping out to the internet to find it (routing problem) or just stoping there.

Fingers crossed but I think I have it working, at least the laptop has joined the network which is the important thing.

I think zonealarm had some ports closed which are now open and things are starting to work!

If you need ping to work, remember it's not a TCP (or UDP) port

You need to enable ICMP.

Don't confuse it with TCP echo or anything

cheers

Ok, thanks to everyone for their help, I was going to give up on this days ago but your persistence inspired me to carry on.

Anyway, I am now the proud father of a three computer network brought into existence on 15 may 2007 at around 11.00 after a labour of 4 days.

All three are doing well and I can now look forward to getting some sleep tonight.