• We’re currently investigating an issue related to the forum theme and styling that is impacting page layout and visual formatting. The problem has been identified, and we are actively working on a resolution. There is no impact to user data or functionality, this is strictly a front-end display issue. We’ll post an update once the fix has been deployed. Thanks for your patience while we get this sorted.

Anyone ever got two XP machines to network without NetBEUI?

boomerang

boomerang

Lifer
It seems rather strange, from seeing the numerous posts here from people that can't get two or more XP machines to network together to share files "out of the box."

I couldn't get ours to work at home so I installed NetBEUI.

Couldn't get several friends and the wife's office to work without NetBEUI. And once you have it installed, it's a quick fix. It works........right now.

The problem is there for both Home and Pro from my experience.

What are the reasons for this? XP automates the task so smoothly compared to most of the preceding versions of Windows for home users. Yet it still won't work.

Just curious.
 
I have two small four-five computer networks using WinXP Pro running on the TCP/IP protocol just fine. I don't know what the fuss is.
 
Really. There are so many posts here about it and I have never had any luck at all. The machines can never see each other. I don't run the network setup wizard either.

Interesting.
 
I guess it depends on how you test if they can 'see' each other. I don't use network places. I just did a quick check of network places and none of my XP machines show up. I could fix this by turning on netbios over tcp/ip.

But I don't care about network places or netbios over tcp/ip. I access my machines using \\machinename from the run box and everything works fine.
 
If you start new with a clean machine doing only LAN TCP/IP will work well for sharing.

The problem is that with all the Firewall variety of security filters, TCP/IP ?Interceptor?, and the variety of Network related Utilities the TCP/IP get "Confused" after a while.

It is possible to Reset the stack go over few registry entries and refresh the TCP/IP system.
However it is much easier to add NetBEUI to the sharing mix and Share fast and without a problem.

P.S. The NetBEUI trick is advisable only for Small Home Networks.

More here: Sharing Disk Drives Between Computers on Windows Network.

:sun:
 
I'm using it with three workstations and a server. One Laser printer on the network also. Very light network traffic, not that I think that would matter. Would you suggest I go strictly TCP/IP in this situation? It sounds as if that is the case.

You've got lots of good information at your site Jack. Been wanting to get the opportunity to tell you for some time now.
 
Also, by default, WinXP includes an addition security policy registry setting that prevents access to shares, unless you create a user acct. on each machine. (Assuming home LAN here, workgroup-style, no domain.) This is over and above disabling "simple file sharing". W2K does not have this default restriction. This tends to also cause interoperability problems with Win9x machines accessing XP and vice-versa.

I think installing NetBEUI simply gets around this issue more directly, although I could be wrong, because you would think that security policy restrictions on Windows File and Print Sharing would apply, regardless of the lower-level SMB transport utilized.

It could also have to do with the fact that XP defaults to a link-local non-routable IP address (169.x.x.x, I think) if no DHCP server is present on the network, so perhaps every machine ends up in their own IP subnet, preventing SMB over TCP/IP from working properly, even by directly specifying the IP of the machine with the share on it? Installing NetBEUI would therefore bypass the TCP/IP subnet issues.
 
upon reading about NETBEUI I got the impression that it was the better way to file share over a small network. I followed the instructions on EZLAN.net and it didn't work. I guess I'll stick with TCP/IP.
 
TCP/IP will work, though it is not as willing to 'find' other PC's on your network.

NetBeui will work fine also.

For security I use NetBeui for file sharing. I bind the file sharing only to NetBeui only(uncheck TCP/IP), thus any TCP/IP traffic from the network cannot access a share.
 
I used to use NetBEUI; it's fine for home networks, but it's not routeable, so impractical for anything large. But now I just stick with TCP/IP. Microsoft doesn't really support using NetBEUI in XP from what I understand anyway (that's not to say it doesn't work just fine).
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Back
Top