Problem connecting WinXP Pro and Win2000 Pro 2

[Joepin]

Please Help!!

I am not a networking expert and this is driving me insane.

I previously had a laptop running Win2000 Pro and a home PC also running Win2000 Pro. I was able to access shared folders on both without any problems via cross-over cable.

Now my new laptop is running on WinXP Pro and I simply cannot access the Win2000 machine. The IP-Address on the Win2000 machine is 192.168.0.1 and the WinXP machine is 192.168.0.2

They can ping themselves but not one another.

I read in another thread that the XP firewall might cause problems. I have disabled the ICFW service on the XP machine. But still no luck.

 

[PatrickLipp]

Found the problem.

We have a hp Procurve 8000M switch with Gigabit modules. The Gigabit modules has a problem with the chipset of the builtin NICs of the hp proliant DL380 G3.

Workaround:
Disable and enable the port in the switch.

Problem will be solved with the next firmware release for the procurve 8000M switch. Not working Firmware Release is 9.16.

regards,
patrick

 

[roadrun777]

Ok, hold up.
Everything appears right in your ipconfig dump Joepin.
Am I to understand that you can not ping each machine either way?
If yes, are you 100% sure that cable works? I know it sounds stupid, but I have hooked up cables and they worked, only to hook them up later and they didn't (normally due to a bad crimp job, its so easy for a wire to wiggle lose in the connector).
If you are 100% sure your cable is good, then I have to say I am 99% sure your problem is an incompatibility between your 2 nic cards. I have had this problem before, and as a matter of fact, it has always been with realtek cards. I have a realtek card in one of my computers now, and the strange thing about it is if that computer is ON before my main computer they will not see each other, but if I boot up my main computer before the one with the realtek card, they see each other fine. Deatils are not real important here, only that one should know, if you are using a crossover cable, and 2 different brand nic cards, you can run into problems.
My suggestion is to implement a HUB between the 2 computers, and/or buy 2 nic's that are identical.
They are soooo cheap these days you can pick up 2 of them for 15$, so that should not be a real problem.
I am willing to bet that you get a hub or 2 identical nic's your problems will vanish.
- The 1% sceneraio -
If you have modified your security profiles in ANY way, that can easily cause the problems you are stating, but I am assuming you would already know that and have informed us if you had played around with the security policies.

 

[roadrun777]

USB101, I just read your thread, and you are right, that is a good point but the problem here is Joepin says he can not "ping" the other computer, and that is an isse dealing with connectivity, not security. Unless of course he modified his security policies to not allow any connections. (which is possible, I have done it before for certain computers). Joepin hasn't stated that he changed any security policies, so he should be able to at least ping the other machine. Once he can ping them, then he can worry about security, as it will give him a very big clue (as in a dialog box that pops up and says connection denied or refused becuase of rights).

 

[iyedidit]

I experienced a similar problem when connecting 2 xp pro boxes together via hub. I ended up having to uninstall/reinstall file and print sharing on one of the boxes. I cannot recall 100% if the machines could ping each other or not.

 

[Effcom]

Hi,

Have you managed to solve the problem? I have almost the same one. I have a Win2k and an XP connected to a router&HUB. They can ping the router and any other machines connected to the Internet, but thay can not ping/see each other. So there can not be cable problem, and the network cards also have to be correct ones (I think). I'm using DHCP and it's working correctly also. I would be glad if Joepin could say something.

Regards,
Effcom

 

[Effcom]

Hi,

I found out! There was a PC Cillin Virus detector software on the XP and it has firewall functionality. I had to disable it. The W2K is connected to an other network through VPN. My VPN software has a service layer part. I had to stop this VPN service.

So if you have souch a problem try to find some kind of "hidden" firewall.

Best Regards,
Effcom

 

[cadaveca]

the #1 route of all networking problems that i have had was due to firewalls being there when i did not know it... i had added to a thread last night for connecting ME and XP Home...i tried everything to get the 2 to connect.. after 2 hours on the phone last night @ 1 am i was finally able to get the pc's to connect...@ the last point they saw each other but when i tried to map the drives i could not find the ME machines drive....and lo an behold... a firewall...
so i've come up with this routine for connecting pc's.....
re-install nic drivers...disable all and any anti-virus software....set domains the same, varying of course the last ip sequence....make sure that they are part of the same workgroup...ping loopback and own ip...and then fianlly mapping the drives....i have had to set up 4 networks today and by going through these steps i was able to connect without a problem....re-enabling the firewall posed no problems either, but i have been using ipx/spx for the network protocol and have found that MCAfee does not filter this protocol...so this brings me to this...am i opening these pc's up to attck by using a ipx for the network and tcp/ip for internet connectivity?

 

[bcastner]

Ipx/Spx does not route.

 

[cadaveca]

bcastner.... i am not quite following you...ipx spx does not route? i put ipx spx as the first protocol on the machine(win xp does not allow for tcp/ip removal, so i am refering to 9x) and i can find each pc no prob.....but because the internet is built around tcp/ip i have to install that as well(i think) to get the pc's "online". i had thought of trying to use ipx/spx for the entire network and only have tcp/ip installed on my "gateway" machine....can i do that and still have the other machine hit the "net" or do they really need tcp/ip? Most networks i have set up are internal file sharing only, but everybody wants access to the internet at some point.

 

[cadaveca]

maybe this will help you understand the questions..@home I have 2 adsl modems..one for each machine i use regularly.. the win xp home machine had the"nachi" worm which i managed to contain in faxscv by disabling the service via services.msc...but as soon as i put ipx spx to try to connect to my linux box the worm took hold again and within 5 minutes my pagefile was over a gig. was it really ipx/spx that was the prob, or did the worm just manage to insinuate itself some other way? I had found the worm(and did not know what exactly it was until my machine said it had to increase pagefile size, guessed it was a worm and deleted every service affected (explorer,spoolsv,etc out of windows via safe mode and restored them from my xp cd)

 

[bcastner]

You still need TCP/IP on each machine, win9x or otherwise, for internet access. You have no choice about this as a transport.

My point about IPX/SPX was that as a LAN only protocol it does not route, and therefore is not a WAN-side security hole for you.

Netbui by the way does not route either, and therefore as a protocol layer offers similar protections to workstations with both WAN and LAN connections.

The only vulnerability as a general issue is that some sides of Netbios are, due to Dcom and RPC services, open on both interfaces unless precautions are taken. The first is not to bind Netbios to the WAN interface. The other precaution is to not make ports 339 and 445 open on the WAN interface. And finally to patch the MS OS versions affected to avoid buffer overflow attacks on these ports.

 

[bcastner]

As one final note, if you take the simple precaution of NATing the WAN side -to - LAN side, most of the present worm attacks are nullified.

If I was hosting one, much less two WAN interfaces on a LAN, the first thing I would do is add a NAT router.

 

[cadaveca]

thanks for the explanation.. i thought that was what you meant but your post was so vague.. i just wanted to clarify.. and you did... thanks for the help!

 

[mikeshan1784]

Not sure if this helps or not but I had the same problem. I have a XP Pro laptop and and Win2k desktop that could not communicate with each other.

I found that there was a firewire connection on the laptop. XP considered that as a network connection and for some reason made it the primary lan connection. I simply right clicked on it in the "Network Connections" area and chose "Disable". The laptop then started using the nic as the primary lan connection and the nightmare was over. Just thought I would share.... Good luck.....

 

[MichaelDell]

ipx/spx doesn't route? Someone may want to notify Novell, Microsoft and Cisco about this. They have been doing it for years, or maybe they think they have.

http://support.microsoft.com/defaul...port/kb/articles/q203/0/51.asp&NoWebContent=1

 

[bpistone]

IPX/SPX can be routed but the internet routers are not set up to do it. You can also use an IPX to IP gateway/IPX proxy client for a protocol layer separation. Less people are doing it because TCP/IP has become the standard. You should be able to ping between systems under normal conditions, however if a firewall or port block is done then you will not ping. It is completely possible that internet connection security was enabled through one of Microsoft's wonderful wizards. This could have prevented pinging. You might still be able to see a share one way and the new security on the XP would restrict you from accessing anything. I believe you need to have a share on the XP to make it available or you can use the NET USE and map to the hidden share. It will probably ask for a password. Also DNS is becoming even more important so I would minimally recommend adding the required entries to each hosts file.

 

[bazzrington]

I've been going spastic trying to get my (work) laptop W2k & Home PC W2k machines to connect over my broadband rounter/hub. They have in the past but (during variuos rebuilds of home PC) they have stopped working. As above they could each ping the router but not each other. I just couldn't understand it. I had disabled all the Software firewalls I could find and was starting to think the router firewall might be to blame. However, after reading the above I tried uninstalling my work VPN from my home PC (I have it installed on both machines). All of a sudden the laptop can again ping & map to the shared drives on my home PC. A revelation! At last I can share files again, although I still cannot map or ping the other way (and I don't want to unistall the VPN from my work laptop).

You just wouldn't expect an 'inactive' piece of software to be doing that. After the loss of much hair, maybe I shall now go and rant at IBM who supplies our VPN soloution.

 

[ZbenDavid]

As Joepin started the thread I have a similar problem which drives me insane.
I have 2 machines, one running win2k pro and one running winxp pro. The winxp has 2 Ethernet cards, one connected to Internet via Cable modem and the other connected to a hub. The win2k is connected to the hub. Both machines can browse the internet but I can not manage to see the connection between the two.
Further details:
Both belong to the same workgroup.
I can not ping mutually each other (none of them can ping the other).
File sharing has been enabled.
Firewall are disabled.
I tried all the tricks in this thread and nothing...
I can not find how to install NetBEUI on the winXP machine.
Need help urgently.
Thanks

 

[bcastner]

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/using/itpro/networking/netbeui.asp

But see:

http://www.scotsnewsletter.com/38.htm#tipadaweek

 

[RichieClarke]

Thought I'd help you people out. See steps below.
1: if you have a problem with connecting via x-over cable, check you have link light on both NIC's, if you have but still can't talk, check that link speed and duplex settings are set to the same on both machines (this can be found by going to properties of the NIC in device manager on all versions of windows. Also force the settings to be the same because auto negotiate is prone to many problems.) That will sort any x-over cable issues out - other wise one or more NIC's are faulty.

2: if you have a software problem causing you not to be able to comunicate with other machines on your network, check the following; IP address and Subnet mask are set correctly, All machines are a member of a workgroup (unless you have a Domain Controller to authenticate your computers onto the network) and that the workgroup name is identical on all machines, check that the netbios name of the computer doesn't have any none standard characters in such as _.= etc., check your adapter bindings in the ADVANCED menu option in network connections, Check that the username and password you are using to access shares on remote computers is identical to a username and password on the machine you are trying to access to start with, check that you have no firewall software running like McAfee or even WinXP's own firewall software.

See how you go with that to start off with and let me know if you guys still have problems.

Also some of the posts I saw earlier ie. Broadband routers connected to multi-homed computers with another computer hanging off the spare interface, those problems are almost certainly related to your routing table on your multi-homed machine.

Cheers,

Richie.