Windows networking glitch.

[nath]

Ello,

Little annoying thing I've got going on with a clients network that I've seen before and short of a full rebuild, haven't been able to fix. Any help would be appreciated.

It's a Windows XP Home desktop and a XP Pro laptop. I'm trying to set up file and printer sharing, the source being the desktop PC so simple file sharing is all I can do. When I try and connect up using the computer names (i.e. \\desktoppc\ etc.) it doesn't work. Also, that name doesn't resolve despite netbios being enabled. When I ping the desktop from the laptop, I time out. When I ping the laptop from the desktop the first packet times out and the following 3 work fine. Then when I go back to the laptop it can ping the desktop. It's as though the desktop intiating a ping allows it to receive them from the laptop.

So, once I've managed to get the two pinging via IP (still won't work via name) I then go to the laptop and do a \\192.168.1.50 (desktop ip) and it brings up the network shares. The two file shares I've made are there and working (albeit very slowly). Then after a few minutes they stop working. The printer never works, refuses to connect (forgot to take the exact message :\).

Anyhoo, I've checked the situation with the firewall, it's just windows firewall and file/printer sharing is enabled on it. I've also tried disabling the firewalls completely but it makes no difference.

There's no extra software running on these machines (as far as I can tell) that have *anything* to do with networking at all, no McAffe *spit* or Norton *projectile vomit*. So basically, it should just work straight away.
Also, they're on a wireless network but it shouldn't be related to that as the problems they have pinging each other isn't happening when trying to ping the router or websites, so the connection to the router is 100% solid and as a result should be to each other too.

Any ideas would be appreciated, I'm trying to avoid doing a windows rebuild but it's looking more and more like that's what needs to be done :\

Ta!

 

[Deerstalker]

Ello,

Little annoying thing I've got going on with a clients network that I've seen before and short of a full rebuild, haven't been able to fix. Any help would be appreciated.

It's a Windows XP Home desktop and a XP Pro laptop. I'm trying to set up file and printer sharing, the source being the desktop PC so simple file sharing is all I can do. When I try and connect up using the computer names (i.e. \\desktoppc\ etc.) it doesn't work. Also, that name doesn't resolve despite netbios being enabled. When I ping the desktop from the laptop, I time out. When I ping the laptop from the desktop the first packet times out and the following 3 work fine. Then when I go back to the laptop it can ping the desktop. It's as though the desktop intiating a ping allows it to receive them from the laptop.

So, once I've managed to get the two pinging via IP (still won't work via name) I then go to the laptop and do a \\192.168.1.50 (desktop ip) and it brings up the network shares. The two file shares I've made are there and working (albeit very slowly). Then after a few minutes they stop working. The printer never works, refuses to connect (forgot to take the exact message :\).

Anyhoo, I've checked the situation with the firewall, it's just windows firewall and file/printer sharing is enabled on it. I've also tried disabling the firewalls completely but it makes no difference.

There's no extra software running on these machines (as far as I can tell) that have *anything* to do with networking at all, no McAffe *spit* or Norton *projectile vomit*. So basically, it should just work straight away.
Also, they're on a wireless network but it shouldn't be related to that as the problems they have pinging each other isn't happening when trying to ping the router or websites, so the connection to the router is 100% solid and as a result should be to each other too.

Any ideas would be appreciated, I'm trying to avoid doing a windows rebuild but it's looking more and more like that's what needs to be done :\

Ta!

are both IP addresses on a class D subnet , ie 255.255.255.0 ? 10.10.1.x, 10.10.1.y ? and the default gateway is the same for both?

Deer.

 

[TdC]

what Deerstalker said imo. Somehow I gather that XP pro can fake it's network, or at least, that happened to me recently when my doze box in 255.0.0.0 could connect fine to a box in 255.255.255.0 without a route to it :/

anyway, your problem seems to be the initial ARP request failing when trying to ping at. the fact that it works after the XPpro pings the Home is because the machines have managed to exchange MAC adresses due to the network thingy "feature" in Pro.

oh and isn't 255.255.255.0 a C?

 

[nath]

Well, first they were on DHCP and receiving their details from the router, so definetly the same. After that I reset them to subnet of 255.255.255.0 and the gateway is 192.168.1.1

That's some handy info there teedles, any idea on what might need to be done to rectify this?

 

[TdC]

imo you need to install something like this : http://www.ethereal.com/

its a network packet sniffer / protocol analyzer, which will tell you exactly what is happening on the wire. start it up, and then ping either of the machines. you should see something like this:

perrin -> (broadcast)  ARP C Who is 192.168.1.3, 192.168.1.3 ?
192.168.1.3 -> perrin       ARP R 192.168.1.3, 192.168.1.3 is 0:11:d8:26:7f:31
192.168.1.3 -> perrin       ICMP Echo request (ID: 512 Sequence number: 1792
perrin -> 192.168.1.3  ICMP Echo reply (ID: 512 Sequence number: 1792)

it should help you work out where things are failing. you don't have to be an expert to know that if a computer sends out a request it's expecting a reply in a somewhat timely fashion

 

[Mellow]

Try making sure their workgroup name is the same.

Try making sure the IP's are in the same range.

Try making sure the subnets are the same.

Try going to c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc and adding entries for both machines into the hosts file.

Try disabling the windows firewall.