XP Pro networking

Hi,

I have a laptop and a desktop and was trying to set up a small home network for myself. Both comps are running Windows XP professional. I got a netgear hub, and both comps have 3com ethernet cards. I talked to my ISP and managed to wrangle two ip addresses out of them. When i plug the comps into the hub, they both get to the internet fine, but they can't see each other. They are in the same workgroup, they can ping each other fine. I tried turning the firewalls off, tried installing netbeui, and the best i could do was get one computer to see the other (which ever computer i logged into first could see the other but got a logon failure error, the other computer couldn't even get into the workgroup.) Tried running the XP wizards and that didn't help, tried calling netgear and the two guys i was talked to told me to ping the other computer and when that worked, they said their job was done. I'm completely baffled so any help whatsoever would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Agathron

Did you use network wizard?

Yup tried that, still didn't work.

HERE is an excellent tutorial on how to set up file sharing between computers running Windows XP Pro.

Once you've got your network working, you'll want to give a little extra thought to security since you're using two public IP addresses instead of being shielded through a router & NAT. I strongly recommend you use a software firewall -- preferably something a bit more full-featured than the one built into Windows, like ZoneAlarm. I'd also recommend you unbind file and print sharing from TCP/IP on both computers and bind it to a different protocol like IPX/SPX or NetBEUI to shield your shares from the rest of the Internet.

Are the IPs you have static or dynamic.
If they are dynamic, you will not get the PCs to communicate using TCP/IP without reconfiguring each time your IPs change.

If they are static, you need to a) provide IP mapping (DNS & WINS) for the PCs and b) provide routing between them. You can provide the mapping by configuring the HOSTS and LMHOSTS files located in %systemroot%\system32\drivers\etc. They are text files. Sample files have a .SAM extension, whereas the functioning files have no extension.

You can add routing between the PCs with the route command from a command window.

OR

You can use a protocol such as NetBEUI on each PC. You must have a unique computername with no embedded spaces for each machine.

Each user needs an identical username/password combination on each machine.

Would it make more sense to switch from a hub to a router? And if i have a router, would i still need a hub? Thanks for all the help.

agathron

Yes, it would help. With the hub both systems have an IP given by your ISP. In this case, they're on the ISP's network, not a relativley secure private network on which you can feel comfortable enabling filesharing.. With a router you can use one IP given by your ISP, then use the router to dynamically assign IPs to your computers. This way, you shouldn't have any trouble sharing files.

Excellent, back to return the hub it is.

Thanks for all the help, i'll probably be back in a couple days with more complaints ;)

agathron

So I've moved over to a router and the internet is working fine. Both computers can now see each other (A & B) but only B can log into A. When i double click A from B i get the following message

\\A is not accessible. You might not have permission to use this network resource. Contact the administrator of this server to find out if you have access permissions.

Logon Failure: the user has not been granted the requested logon type at this computer.


So the question is, how do i log in, ie pop up some kind of box to enter a username and password. Or where do i plug in the ip to let another computer log in? Is that the lmhosts and hosts file that was mentioned earlier?

Thanks,

agathron

It sounds like you're logging into one computer using an account that doesn't exist on the other one. Make sure that the account you're using is set up on both computers with identical user names and passwords. And then make sure that user has been given permission to access what you want to "see" over the network.

Where do i set up those permissions? Also, both user names and passwords appear to be identical. If i wanted to log into the other computer using a different username how would I do that?

Quote:

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Originally posted by Agathron
Where do i set up those permissions? Also, both user names and passwords appear to be identical. If i wanted to log into the other computer using a different username how would I do that?

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Make sure that the username you're using on both computers has the right to access the local computer from the network. Open Start->Run, type "secpol.msc" and hit enter. Under Local Policies->User Rights Assignment, be sure the user is granted the "Access this computer from the network" right. After that, grant the user at least read access to the folder or drive you're trying to access. To do that, right click on the share(you did create shares right?) you want to access and go to Properties, Security tab. If you don't see groups and users in a box and access rights in a box below that, you've got Simple File Sharing enabled. To disable that, open an explorer window and go to Tools-Folder Options. Under the View tab, scroll to the bottom of the Advanced Settings box and uncheck Simple File Sharing.

Hope that helps...

I just noticed another problem, with the new router the two comps can't even ping each other. I tried assigning static ip address to both but that didn't seem to work either.

BloodRed: how do i configure the username? Is it the computer name or what i log in as on the new computer, just wondering about the format. Thanks for the help.

Quote:

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Originally posted by Agathron
I just noticed another problem, with the new router the two comps can't even ping each other. I tried assigning static ip address to both but that didn't seem to work either.

BloodRed: how do i configure the username? Is it the computer name or what i log in as on the new computer, just wondering about the format. Thanks for the help.

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How are you pinging the computers? By computername or IP? How are you assigning IPs? Does the router support DHCP? You need to work that out, if they can't ping each other via IPs there's no point in worrying about file-sharing yet.

I'd create an identical username and password on each system and use it as my primary login, that way you'll be able browse shares without supplying a username/password once that user has access to the drives of each local system. If you have different usernames and passwords and don't want to change them, you should get a prompt when you try to access the other system. In that case, just supply the username/password with access to that computer, "comp1\comp1username" for example.

The router is assiging ip's through DHCP. I was trying to ping via ip, xxx.xxx.xxx.02 and .03 by default i think. Should i just assign them statically?

they can both ping the router fine, which is .01 by default.