Network problems..Need Help. Head Fried!

DannyBZR

Hi Guys,

I have two problems at the minute... First one, I am running a pc with windows 2000 on it, this pc has a printer installed on it, I have gone through all the set up as I know but I still cannot get the printer to share.... The other pc that I have in the house is connected to the internet through a router and cable modem and the internet connection is shared to the windows 2000 pc and a laptop, no problems there. I have tried to set up a work group called "Home" on all three pcs and the Win2000 machine seems to be the only one that sees any of the others, but noting can be shared... The laptop and other pc which are running xp media and xp home respectively. The too xp machines will not allow me to see anything in the workgroup at all, not even the other pcs..... Between the Jigs and the reels, I want to share the printer on the win2000 machine with the others in the house, anyone know why it wont work for me???? If anymore details are needed just ask, oh and the addressing is dynamic.

The 2nd thing is, I have a used to use a belkin router and changed it to a netgear one, since I did the connection on both the xphome machine and on the laptop drop if they are inactive for a period of time, it dosent seem to happen to the win2000 machine atall.. Both machine will have to be restarted as even repairing the connection will not work... Any ideas??

I know this is a mouthful so cheers in advance.

Danny

Static M.e.

Some quick check points for you.

All machines are members of the workgroup "Home" make sure its spelt the same on each PC.

Do you have MS File & Print Sharing enabled on your Network Cards?

Have you switced off your Firewalls on each PC to test Network access.

On each PC run "Start > Run > IPconfig" once you get an IP address place it in the Run box like so \\xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx as see what you can get.

DannyBZR

Static M.e. wrote:

Some quick check points for you.

All machines are members of the workgroup "Home" make sure its spelt the same on each PC.

Do you have MS File & Print Sharing enabled on your Network Cards?

Have you switced off your Firewalls on each PC to test Network access.

On each PC run "Start > Run > IPconfig" once you get an IP address place it in the Run box like so \\xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx as see what you can get.

I have "HOME" spelt the same on all machines, I havent tried taking down the firewalls so I will give that a go. All machines have File and printer share enabled within the network settings. I have tried to ping across to a machine and that is timing out with no reply

DannyBZR

Static M.e. wrote:

On each PC run "Start > Run > IPconfig" once you get an IP address place it in the Run box like so \\xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx as see what you can get.

Just tried the above and it returned a screen with "Printer" "Printers and Faxes" "Shared docs" and "Scheduled Tasks". The network printer is not there, now I have tried this from the laptop not from the win2000 machine that has the printer connected to it

Static M.e.

From the PC the printer is installed on, are you actually Sharing it?

Have you right clicked and actually shared the printer?

Static M.e.

I have tried to ping across to a machine and that is timing out with no reply

IF you cant ping the machine thats generally bad news, what Firewall are you using?

if you still cant ping after taking the firewalls down. do ipconfig/all from all the machines and post the results here.

DannyBZR

Static M.e. wrote:

IF you cant ping the machine thats generally bad news, what Firewall are you using?

if you still cant ping after taking the firewalls down. do ipconfig/all from all the machines and post the results here.

Using zonealarm on all machines, I will post the results when I take down the firewalls

runswithascript

I'd bet dollars to donuts it's the firewall that's the culrpit.

Also, does he need a firewall on all machines if networked? Can't he just have the firewall running on the machine connected to the gateway?

junii

dusf wrote:

I'd bet dollars to donuts it's the firewall that's the culrpit.

Also, does he need a firewall on all machines if networked? Can't he just have the firewall running on the machine connected to the gateway?

The firewalls on all machines will stop outgoing spyware connections etc.

runswithascript

junii wrote:

The firewalls on all machines will stop outgoing spyware connections etc.

Does one of the nodes have to be elected to somehow govern the rest or if not must all of them be made aware of each other more than just allowing communication between each of their IP addresses? For instance; downloading updates - can't one just download the updates and share them instead of them all doing this independently?

DannyBZR

dusf wrote:

Does one of the nodes have to be elected to somehow govern the rest or if not must all of them be made aware of each other more than just allowing communication between each of their IP addresses? For instance; downloading updates - can't one just download the updates and share them instead of them all doing this independently?

I suppose that would be considered a client/server model. But the way in which I hope to do it could be considered peer to peer I suppose..

DannyBZR

I just took down the firewall on the machine with the printer attached, I have tried to ping to it form the machine running xp and this has returned successfull results, no packets were dropped, so there is a connection there alright..

So anyone care to tell me how to get this printer working with keeping the firewalls up, I'm not sure if you can allows connections in zonealarm?? As before all the sharing etc is set up on the machine with the printer installed..

DannyBZR

Ok just to let ye all know, got the file and printer sharing to work across all machines, it turns out it was the firewalls that were the issue.. All I did was set up a trusted zone which contained the ip address range of all my machines at home and that was it really.. So cheers for the help, finally got this problem sorted...Its always something simple that you never think of, thanks again..