After 6 hrs of reading I still cannot find an answer to why all of the sudden
my Network (which was working fine) no longer works.
I have two laptops that were networked fine for over a month. One is an XP
SP2, and the other Vista fully updated as of today. Like I said, they were
networked fine, and I didn't have to do anything. I just brought home the new
Vista laptop, plugged it in, and it networked and shared files perfectly. I'm
assuming that I downloaded some updates recently that destroyed the ability
of my computers to see each other.
I can ping both machines, but even though file sharing is set up exactly the
way it was before, I can no longer view the other machines shared folers.
I downloaded the LLTD for the xp machine, didn't work.
I upgraded my routers firmware, didn't help.
Of course I've always had the godless windows firewall turned OFF. Network
discovery: on,
Network set to private,
File sharing: on,
Public folder sharing: on,
Password protection: off.
I've run XP's home network wizard like 50 times.
Both machines are set to workgroup name: Workgroup.
I cannot access either machine through Run > \\XPCOMPUTERNAME (etc). Both
machines are set to Netbios over TCP/IP, no help.
I've read about 5 or 6 hours worth of posts, comments and articles online to
no avail. I tried to run the Group Policy Manager but Add/Remove Snap-In
doesn't list it so I don't know how to even run it!
Any last ditch ideas? Do I need to post my whole ipconfig /all ? (If so,
then none of this is worth it in the long run. What if it happens again
during my next set of updates?)
I'm throwing my hands up. I'm going to have to purchase a crossover cable
and go oldschool. Either way, I'm sick and tired of windows. If I wasn't
given this windows laptop from my work I would be using a Mac.