Win2k connection question

I've got a problem, both machines running win2k:

machine A) Dell laptop that's owned by work - is set up as part of their NT domain (and has to stay that way).

machine B) my homebuilt desktop - right now set up to connect to a Workgroup with the same name as the NT domain.

I can connect from B to A with no problems - I just have to log in under a local user on the laptop (since my real login resides on the NT domain).

The problem is that I cannot get A to connect to B - the laptop reports something like "there's no logon servers running".

I'm thinking this is because A thinks everything is part of the NT domain - but B isn't there. Since I'm not connected to the VPN, it can't find a logon server (of course B wouldn't have an account there anyway).

Is there any way for my laptop to see the desktop?

When you log in to your Dell laptop, are you using your regular domain user name & password? If so, you shouldn't need to be connected to the domain for authentication, as Windows will cache the past x number of logins. Create an account on your other computer that has the same name and password as your domain account and assign that account permission to whatever you want to access (or just put it in the local admin group if you want). Then you should be able to log into your laptop using your domain account and still have access to everything on your other system via your LAN.

Just remember that if you change your password on your company's domain (and then login to your work domain with your laptop), you'll need to change the password on the account you created on your home system, too.

Are you running something like BlackIce on B that would mask its ports from A?

First, at this point, there's no firewall involved. Eventually, there'll be a Linux Gateway to confuse things, but it's not there yet.

Now, need a little clarification:

On the laptop, I am using the regular domain user account, and don't need to be online to log in, even though this account doesn't exist locally. When connecting from the desktop, I have to log in as Admin (because it's the only local user).

On the desktop, I have already created a local account with the same name and password, which is in the admin group.

But, the laptop is looking for a logon server - after reading the first reply, I verified everything and logged the laptop into the domian so there'd be a logon server somewhere - but that didn't work either.

What am I missing? Note that the desktop can log onto the laptop okay, it's the other way around that's the problem.

Change the name of your workgroup and use windows workgoup to log the laptop on to the home network. If you get the domain server error dont worry about it the laptop will still log onto the workgroup and when you use the laptop at work it will log onto the domain.

Thanks for the help so far, but I'm not there yet.

My laptop is set up to be part of the "SALES" domain - this cannot be changed (I already played with it once and the IT guy wasn't happy - had to reset the computer's account).

My desktop is set to use a Workgroup "SALES".
I just got the Linux box on the network running Samba using the Workgroup "SALES".

The desktop and Linux box get along 100% fine. The laptop can be seen by the desktop by logging in as any "local" account, which isn't my domain account.

The laptop can see, but cannot connect to, either the desktop (complains about no logon server) or the Linux box -- I've reached the conclusion that the problem is that the laptop isn't really on the 'SALES' workgroup - it's stuck in the domain.

Is there any way to get the laptop to connect to the local workgroup? It seems that the Network Connections options don't give you quite enough flexibility....

At the laptop log on locally, don't log on to the domain.

Quote:

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Originally posted by ua549
At the laptop log on locally, don't log on to the domain.

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To get to everything on that domain, this isn't really an option.

I finally got things working: instead of using the Network Browsing stuff, I went through the Map Network Drive - here I could tell it to use a different user name and password (something local on whatever machine is being logged into). Worked like a charm. Now both Win2k machines see each other (via mapped network drives) and see the Linux machine (again, mapped Samba share).

Now I can finally get to work...