IceHockeyJason said:
Guys, I am working with a support person who installs Mitchell Car Part
inventory systems and we cannot get a Windows 2000 shared drive to show up
in the Windows XP. What is wrong? What are the steps that we might be
missing? Any help would be welcome. We have to get these machines up and
running before opening day on Monday.
For XP, start by running the Network Setup Wizard on all machines (see
caveat in Item A below). Win2k doesn't have this so just make sure you've
enabled File/Printer Sharing.
http://compnetworking.about.com/od/windowsfilesharing/ht/enable_disable.htm
And obviously both machines need to be on the same network. If you have only
one router they must be. If you have a complicated network setup, on both
machines do:
Start>Run>cmd [enter]
ipconfig /all [enter]
to see each computer's IP address, subnet, gateway, etc.
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:
XP - Configure Windows to Automatically Login (MVP Ramesh) -
http://windowsxp.mvps.org/Autologon.htm
I think control userpasswords2 works on Win2k but I honestly don't remember
and I don't have Win2k running in a virtual machine to check for you.
D. If one or more of the computers is XP Pro or Media Center, turn off Simple
File Sharing (Folder Options>View tab).
Malke
