XP cannot access other workstations in workgroup

[CharlieT302]

Hi All,

I have a peer to peer workgroup consisting of one XP workstation and five Vista machines. The XP workstation has been fine for a couple of months. Yesterday afternoon, while working in a shared file (stored on another workstation), the XP machine suddenly lost access to the other computers; though it was fine in the morning.

Windows Explorer would not even list the other workstations under My Network places. What is even more odd is that the same appears to be true in reverse. The other workstations cannot see the XP machine in Windows Explorer. Yet, the XP machine could ping the others and vica versa.

My first thought was that Mcaffee (on XP) was blocking access to the other workstations, but I could find no evidence of that, and that does explain the other workstations not seeing the XP machine.

On The XP Machine:
*File sharing is active,
*Enable NetBIOS over TCP/IP is active
*I tried disabling Mcaffee.
*The workgroup name is still the same
*I tried re-running the Network Setup Wizard

I would like to upgrade to Vista, but I would really like to know why this happened. My concern is that we upgrade to Vista and have the same issue.

Has anyone had similar issues or know of a solution?

Thanks

 

[G0AOZ]

What about IP Addresses... Static or Dynamic?
Does the XP machine have an Internet connection via a router? If yes, can it ping the router and does Internet connection work ok?

You said, "the XP machine could ping the others and vica versa". Does that statement mean it still can... or not any longer?

Do the other (Vista) machines talk to each other ok, assuming they did so before?

I take it you've tried rebooting ALL machines and the router, or whatever issues IP Addresses (if appropriate).

ROGER - G0AOZ.

 

[CharlieT302]

Hi,

All other pc's are working fine. All internet connections, including the XP machine, are working. Every pc can ping all others. All hardware (routers, cables are working and connectec). IP addresses have not changed.
Rebooting after each attempted fix did nothing.

The XP workstation, while working in a shared file (from another workstation, lost its connection.

 

[macpcrepair]

On the vista machine locate the folder containing the file and right click on it.
Choose Sharing and Security. Verify that the folder is shared.
Choose the Permissions button to verify that either no permissions are required or that the xp machines' logged in user has permissions to the file.

 

[CharlieT302]

I appreciate that Macpcrepair,

Shares are in place, permissions are set, and all matching user accounts are created. It's only the XP machine that cannot access network resources. All other machines can access everything, so the folders are shared appropriately.

As I said, its not just that the XP machine cannot retrieve a file, it's not even aware of the presence of the other workstations; nor are they aware of XP. Again, this is a new problem that occured in the middle of the day. In the morning, the XP machine could see everything.

 

[Lemon13]

try winsockfix

http://www.home-network-help.com/winsockfix.html

if that doesnt help try another NIC

M. Knorr

MCSE, MCTS, MCSA, CCNA

 

[DTracy]

Check the firewall on the XP.

Regards,
David

 

[John Lewis]

A few things that may shed some light on your problems:

From the XP machine, try to access one of the Vista machines by IP address. Click on Start, then Run. Type "\\xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx", substituting the IP address of one of the Vista machines. Note the slashes are backslashes -- not the one on the ? key. Click OK. Either a window listing shared resources will open fairly quickly or you will receive an error message after a delay. The error message can take a few minutes, depending upon how your network is configured. If you try this from a Vista machine, you will need to click on the "Details" button to see the actual error.

The "NET" command can be useful as well. Open a command prompt and type "NET HELP" for some details. At a minimum, try "NET VIEW COMPUTER_NAME" and or "NET VIEW \\xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx", again substituting the IP address, backslashes.

When you ping between computers, are you using the computer names or IP? If not using the computer name, give that a try and report the specific error message you receive, if any.