Wireless Networking Question
 

Morning All.

Hopefully this should be an easy question for a networking / wireless guru to answer.

I have set up a wireless network at home, Currently have two desktops(win 98) wired to the back of the router and two laptops(XP) connecting wirelessly.

I am trying to set up shared drives / folders so I can dump info from my desktops to my laptops. (All 4 pc's can connect to the internet successfully)

Have set up the workgroup "HOME" on the XP Laptop which matches the workgroup on the two desktops.

When on XP Laptop I go into my network places and can see Desktop 1 and Desktop 2 but when I click on them to open folders I get this message.

\\Desktop 1/2 is not accessible. You might not have permission to use this network resource.

I created a disk from the XP machine to run netsetup on the two win98 machines cos XP told me too.

How can I get the pc's to see each other ?

:notworthy :notworthy :notworthy

Instead of tring to browse to the desktops, get the IP addresses for both and ping them. It's the most basic connection mechanism, so if ping doesn't work, nothing else will. Check the IP addresses are all in the same range eg 192.168.0.XXX, the subnet masks match (eg 255.255.255.0), and the default gateway is the IP address of your router. Also check that everything is on the WORKGROUP "HOME" and not DOMAIN "HOME". Did you share folders on the desktops before trying to connect to them?

My desktop pings wifes desktop, laptop times out.
Wifes desktop pings my desktop, laptop times out.
Laptop pings my desktop, wifes time out.

All in same workgroup.

XP Laptop can see the desktops in workgroup, just has no permissions ?

Not running a firewall software are you?

Otherwise maybe sounds like your router is bunging everything at the interweb.

Also, try IPCONFIG /ALL in a command window (open command window first) on the XP systems. Run WINIPCFG on WIN98 systems. Check the IP addresses make sense.

J.

Running XP Firewall on Laptop and Zonealarm pro on my Desktop if that helps any ?

Hmmm

Just added ip address for laptop into trusted zone.
will post back if that helps.

Zonealarm will probably be part of the problem. I normally kill it off for 5 minutes if I think it's part of the problem.


J.

Sorted :)

I had added laptop into trusted zone on Desktop but not vice versa :idea:
Bingo

Now I can backup data from Desktop to Laptop.

Drag and Drop is working but is not something I would want to do twice as it is taking ages.

Would the following batch file work by only copying changed files rather than dumping the whole lot again ?


xcopy y:\my documents c:\desktops\Mark /d

I had a 'slow' networking issue a while ago. For wired connections, ensure you hard set the options you need on the card(s). e.g. 100baseT full or half duplex.


XP has this 'feature' called the QOS packet scheduler. Disable that and see if it makes a difference. You should see from the activity lights on the hub/switch if you're getting a reasonable file transfer speed.

J.