XP computer showing up twice in Win 7 network map

Rick5858

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Aug 15, 2012
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Hello,
This probably will challenge the guru's guru. It's a toughie.

Long story short.

Have an older laptop running XP Home, Desktop running XP Pro with printer on it. Wireless network setup and doing fine for bidirectional file share and print share from old lappie to desktop. All worked great.

Bought a brand new high end laptop with Win 7 (not impressed). Finally got the Win 7 new one to recognize both older computers on the Win 7 computer and was able to access file share and print on the desktop. Thought I was done. Nope, now while I can see the old lappie and it can see it in the Win7 computer both directions give me cannot access the drive or specific files even though it "sees" them. All files and disks are set to full share. No password is required or any homegroup is setup on the win 7 system. I've been in the bus. a long time so you know I'm at the end of the rope. All searches through knowledge base and the web have yielded no results to this. I did find an absolute to this in insuring that both systems have the same workgroup. Changed the old lappie to the right name. Made no difference in access (after several reboots). Obviously can't run Easy Transfer with this situation.

Now problem #2. I changed the old lappies workgroup to the same as the Win7 computer in the hopes of fixing this. Made no difference but now I have two iterations my XP laptop in the Win 7 system.When selected, the info for one has the old workgroup and selecting the other shows the new workgroup (matching the Win7 workgroup).

Anyway, throwing up my hands in frustration and disgust. Find no way to even dump the old workgroup map listing. Jeez. Sure glad they (M/S) made this better?
 
Just to be sure it's not something messed up in your network caches, try clearing them on all your machines and rebooting.

arp -d *
nbtstat –R
ipconfig /flushdns

NOTE: Windows 7 will probably require an elevated/administrative DOS prompt.
 

Rick5858

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Aug 15, 2012
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Thanks for the kind response. Know XP very well but a novice on Win 7. Please explain your note on elevated DOS prompt.
Thanks,
 

Rick5858

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Aug 15, 2012
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eibgrad
Thanks again. The DNS cache flush did indeed remove the second iteration. I figured out the elevated DOS prompt. However, that didn't help the no file/folder access between computers. As I said you can see them both ways but upon trying to actually access ther listed file or disk drive it comes back with an access denied.
 
Assuming it’s not a firewall issue, the only way I've ever gotten shares to be accessible across different versions of Windows with any reliability is to make sure I had the same username/password on each system (even if you don’t have a password, you still need the same username), and used it for authorization of shares. Anything less and you end up w/ all this crazy stuff where you have access in one direction, not the other.
 

Rick5858

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Aug 15, 2012
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Well, I'd totally agree with you except that I can see the shared files and folders in each laptop (upon double clicking their network mapped ico)n. Where it comes up no access is when you actually double click on the folder (or drive). All folders or drive says share beneath them. Same for the other direction. Now, to really confuse the issue, My desktop (also an XP system) works great. Can access it fine , all files folders and drive. To compound the curiosity, it has a different named workgroup. I just haven't bothered changing the name since it works great. Shared printer on the desktop also works great on the new laptop.

Weird, huh? Both of the older ones are XP. One works as advertised with no effort and the other doesn't no matter what I do. Firewalls are a nonissue and have been fully eliminated.
 

Rick5858

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Aug 15, 2012
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Yep, all fully updated including the latest security patches. Full SP3. In doing my best CSI, Miami imitation, the more I think about it, the problem lies in the old laptop. The new Win7 laptop communicates fine and fully with the XP desktop. This only falls apart between old & new lappie. To add insult to injury, the old laptop communicates just fine with the desktop and also uses it's shared printer.

The whoosh you hear is my hands going up in surrender. Set up more than a few networks at home. Certainly any possible clues as to what's doing the dirty deed here would be appreciated.
Thanks,