Windows XP Networking Problem

ashwim

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Mar 16, 2006
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I have a small computer network of 10pcs. All PCs have Windows XP Professional installed. Class C IP address are used starting from 192.168.0.1 to 192.168.0.10. Main internet gateway PC's IP is 192.168.0.1 which has a second NIC Card connected to ISP.

I am using simple file sharing in the PCs and all shares of the computers were accessible from each other. A few days ago one of my PC (192.168.0.5-PC5) did not allow other computers to access it from the network showing message as follow.

\PC5 is not accessible. You.... ..... ........

Access is denied

The strange thing about the PC is that the access denied message is displayed only when you try to access the PC by doubleclicking its icon from the My Network Places.

But if you know the share name then you can access the PC without any problems from explorer by typing \pc5share.

Strange problem
Please help me to solve this problem.
 

kdxrider9262

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Apr 27, 2006
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yeh ummm....i have the same problem with my PC (we nicknamed it hitler cause of this now) Not sure what the problem is..dealt with it many many times. no solution
 

Datlev

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May 9, 2006
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If you do not mind rolling up your sleeves a bit, this can be diagnosed.

This could be anything from a buglet in XP, to a name resolution issue, or a software configuration issue.

#1) Is your dual-nic PC running Windows ICS, or are you doing something different to share your internet connection ? (e.g. Linux, etc.)
#2) Do you have a DHCP server configured ? If so which DHCP software are you using ? There is a flag in many DHCP servers that allow you to configure Netbios over TCP settings like WINS server and/or broadcast name lookup. As well if you are using DHCP, Name->IP Address mapping can get confused if your leases expire too short, or if your DHCP server is broken/dumb.
#3) Are you using XPSP2 Firewall ? If so, temporarily disable it on the share machine (and reboot) to ensure no issues.
#4) You may want to run Ethereal (Freeware http://www.ethereal.com) on the client PC to sniff out what is actually happening. Ethereal includes good SMB decoding for Windows Networking.
 

kdxrider9262

Distinguished
Apr 27, 2006
44
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18,530
If you do not mind rolling up your sleeves a bit, this can be diagnosed.

This could be anything from a buglet in XP, to a name resolution issue, or a software configuration issue.

#1) Is your dual-nic PC running Windows ICS, or are you doing something different to share your internet connection ? (e.g. Linux, etc.)
#2) Do you have a DHCP server configured ? If so which DHCP software are you using ? There is a flag in many DHCP servers that allow you to configure Netbios over TCP settings like WINS server and/or broadcast name lookup. As well if you are using DHCP, Name->IP Address mapping can get confused if your leases expire too short, or if your DHCP server is broken/dumb.
#3) Are you using XPSP2 Firewall ? If so, temporarily disable it on the share machine (and reboot) to ensure no issues.
#4) You may want to run Ethereal (Freeware http://www.ethereal.com) on the client PC to sniff out what is actually happening. Ethereal includes good SMB decoding for Windows Networking.


Half of these solutions you have come up with have nothing to do with his problem. He can access his shares by type i.e. \this-computershared but he cannot get it to it by double clicking the computer in the workgroup or domain. SP2 firewall has filesharing on by default. DHCP wouldnt have anything to do with seeing the folders if you can access them otherwise...but ethereal was a good thing to try