MSHOME is not accessible. Why everytime ???

[vinayakawasthi]

Hi All,

Lemme give a brief backgroud. I have 2 laptops. One is having Windows XP professional (Call A) and other is having Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 (Call B). The two are connected to each other with crossover Cat 5 RJ45 cable. My intention was to enable Internet Connection Sharing and file sharing between the two. I use laptop B as the host to connect to the internet via Wireless connectivity provided by my ISP. I ran the Network wizard on the laptop B and configured it as the host. After the configuration, I got the default IP setting of 192.168.0.1 and subnet Mask of 255.255.255.0. The Default Gateway was Null. Also changed the default workgroup name from MSHOME to MYWORKGP and turned On the File & Printer sharing option.

The laptop A was configured as the client and run the Network wizard over it. I added it to the same workgroup MYWORKGP during the setup. Also turned On the File & Printer sharing option.

I have disabled the Windows Firewall (from Local Area Connection->Advanced) on both the laptops.
And voila !!! I was able to share the Interent connection over the two laptops.
But this was the half story
On laptop B
When I went ot the My Network place->Entire Network->Microsoft Windows Network->MYWORKGP, it show me 0 objects.
On laptop A
When I went ot the My Network place->Entire Network->Microsoft Windows Network->MYWORKGP, it gave me the following big error:
Myworkgp is not accessible. You might not have permission to use this
network resource. Contact the administrator of this server to find out if you
have access permissions. The list of servers for this workgroup is not currently available.

I am not able to ping from either of the machine. Both of them displays, Request times out.
I have even enabled NetBios over TCP.

I have read a lot of forums regarding this but to no avail.

Can anybody help me with this issue.

Regards
Vinayak Awasthi

[glc]

Try installing NetBEUI on both machines.

http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;301041

[vinayakawasthi]

Hi,
I have installed NetBEUI on both the machines and hurray , i was able to share my folders on the two machines. But still there lies something fishy I want to understand.

1. Still the machines are not able to ping each other.(I thought atleast client should be able to ping host laptop that has a definite IP of 192.168.0.1 which is assigned during setup) ?

2. Why we need to use NetBEUI as this has been de-supported in XP.

Any commnets.

Vinayak

[glc]

Something is blocking TCP/IP communications between the 2 machines. NetBEUI gets around this.

[vinayakawasthi]

Can we check what is that thing that is preventing the normal operation. I read about the browstat utility. Will the information from that can help in diagonising the same.
I shall put the result of the browstat over here.

[glc]

It's almost always some kind of software firewall that blocks TCP/IP on a LAN. You say you disabled the Windows firewall, but do you have anything from Norton, McAfee, Trend Micro, etc. installed? If the computers all have Internet access and the LAN works with NetBEUI, that means TCP/IP itself is working and your hardware (cables and nics) are all okay.

[vinayakawasthi]

i have McAfee antivirus with personal firewall but didn't realised that it can also cause a problem
to this. I will try to disable it and try again.
Thanks once again.

[glc]

*With personal firewall*............that WILL do it. Just keep using NetBEUI.