mcp6453 said:
Like so many others here, I'm trying to access a shared folder on an XP
SP3 machine from a Vista Home machine. After reading extensively, I have
not found this exact problem, so I'll ask.
All firewalls are turned off. Both computers are in the same workgroup.
The Vista machine has no problem seeing the Internet. It also recognizes
the router. However, the XP machine is not pingable. Unfortunately I
didn't think to ping the gateway when I was there, but my guess is that
nothing was pingable.
This computer is my first step in Vista networking. Is there any part of
the out-of-the-box Vista setup that is necessary to be able to ping other
computers on the LAN? The networking on Vista has been changed to private.
All of the sharing options have been enabled.
I promise, the problem is not a firewall. The share on the XP machine has
previously been accessible on the Internet. However, at present, the only
other machine on the LAN is the Vista machine.
It is very foolish to turn off firewalls and leave the computers connected
to the Internet. You can "promise me" that the inability to ping isn't
because of a firewall but unless I can see the machine myself, there is no
way for me to know that is 100% accurate. Perhaps the machine has a VPN on
it that includes a stateful firewall which you've overlooked. Perhaps
ZoneAlarm is installed on the machine - turning it off will not be enough.
Etc. I'm not saying this to hurt your feelings or offend you, just pointing
out that it is very common to overlook a firewall.
Since I have no idea what you've already done, here is my usual network
troubleshooting boilerplate. Hopefully it will be of some help to you.
Here are general network troubleshooting steps. Not everything may be
applicable to your situation, so just take the bits that are. It may look
daunting, but if you follow the steps at the links and suggestions below
systematically and calmly, you will have no difficulty in setting up your
sharing.
Excellent, thorough, yet easy to understand article about File/Printer
Sharing in Vista. Includes details about sharing printers as well as files
and folders:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb727037.aspx
For XP, start by running the Network Setup Wizard on all machines (see
caveat in Item A below).
Problems sharing files between computers on a network are generally caused
by 1) a misconfigured firewall or overlooked firewall (including a stateful
firewall in a VPN); or 2) inadvertently running two firewalls such as the
built-in Windows Firewall and a third-party firewall; and/or 3) not having
identical user accounts and passwords on all Workgroup machines; 4) trying
to create shares where the operating system does not permit it.
A. Configure firewalls on all machines to allow the Local Area Network (LAN)
traffic as trusted. With Windows Firewall, this means allowing File/Printer
Sharing on the Exceptions tab. Normally running the Network Setup Wizard on
XP will take care of this for those machines.The only "gotcha" is that this
will turn on the XPSP2 Windows Firewall. If you aren't running a
third-party firewall or have an antivirus/security program with its own
firewall component, then you're fine. With third-party firewalls, I
usually configure the LAN allowance with an IP range. Ex. would be
192.168.1.0-192.168.1.254. Obviously you would substitute your correct
subnet. Refer to any third party security program's Help or user forums for
how to properly configure its firewall. Do not run more than one firewall.
DO NOT TURN OFF FIREWALLS; CONFIGURE THEM CORRECTLY.
B. For ease of organization, put all computers in the same Workgroup. This
is done from the System applet in Control Panel, Computer Name tab.
C. Create matching user accounts and passwords on all machines. You do not
need to be logged into the same account on all machines and the passwords
assigned to each user account can be different; the accounts/passwords just
need to exist and match on all machines. DO NOT NEGLECT TO CREATE
PASSWORDS, EVEN IF ONLY SIMPLE ONES. If you wish a machine to boot directly
to the Desktop (into one particular user's account) for convenience, you
can do this. The instructions at this link work for both XP and Vista:
Configure Windows to Automatically Login (MVP Ramesh) -
http://windowsxp.mvps.org/Autologon.htm
D. If one or more of the computers is XP Pro or Media Center, turn off
Simple File Sharing (Folder Options>View tab).
E. Create shares as desired. XP Home does not permit sharing of users' home
directories or Program Files, but you can share folders inside those
directories. A better choice is to simply use the Shared Documents folder.
See the first link above for details about Vista sharing.
Malke
