Issues connecting to computers on home network.

[ku]

Hola! I just snagged a netbook over Thanksgiving and was hoping to be able to access my shared files. On my wireless network, I have 2 machines with XP and 1 with Vista, while my netbook has W7s.

I have always had trouble connecting to the Vista machine, as it would intermittently disappear and become unreachable by the other computers (e.g., won't respond to ping when pinging the local IP address). Meanwhile, I have no trouble connecting to the XP computers from my Vista machine (had a little bit of trouble connecting to W7s, but haven't tested it thoroughly yet). I've also found that if I ping another computer from the Vista machine, I have a window of several minutes in which the pinged machine can connect to the Vista machine.

The windows sharing settings are all set up correctly (as far as I know, and I've set up many home networks... just never with W7s). My guess is that it has something to do with either my firewall settings or my router. Does anyone have any ideas as to how to remedy this?

Thanks!!

EDIT:
So I've discovered some things about the issue... it seems that if the Vista computer has been idle for a little bit (including any activity from connected computers), it disappears from the home network and no other computer can see/connect to it. This can be temporarily fixed by connecting to/pinging specific computers on the network (and then only the pinged computer can see the pinging computer). Anyone know what could cause this and how I could change it?

 

[mikeyes]

Here are some general points I would make sure of.
1. Make sure that all your computers are in the same workgroup
2. Make sure your username and password are the same on all computers
3. Disable HomeGroup on your windows 7 until all your PC's are win7
4. If you can disable the windows firewall when you are on your local home trusted LAN

The vista problem could be caused by the computer going to sleep altogether or by the computer putting the network card to sleep after a period of inactivity. Check the power settings in Vista to make sure it is not trying to put the Network card to sleep.

 

[ku]

Thanks mikeyes. It seems that step 4 (on the Vista machine) seems to have fixed it. I haven't tried step 3, but I guess I don't need to. I've also checked all of the power settings and there's nothing that should turn off until it goes into sleep mode (while plugged in, which is almost always is). Also, this happens while I'm surfing the web on the Vista machine.

So now I've got to hunt down exactly what rules in the firewall I need to change in order to prevent this from happening, though I guess it's really not that bad to have it off when I'm at home. Still, it would give me a little more piece of mind knowing that I have another layer of security (or... does Windows firewall even provide another layer of security? xP).

I guess I've got this solved, but if anyone has any ideas on how to go about exactly what settings to change in Windows firewall, I'd appreciate it.

Thanks!

 

[Emulex]

disable ipv6 on each interface
disable flow control on any interface
ensure all pc's have separate user names (!!) do use use mrkrad as the login for each computer it will cause problems.


try not to mix smb/smb2 machines - all vista/win7/2008 - get rid of any XP/win2k3 machines they will have issues. can't explain it - weird things happen when XP machines work with win2k8R2 servers that i just can't figure out. reverting the file server back to 2003 eradicates the problem. The servers are all VM's so hardware is not the issue since that is virtualized.

 

[VirtualLarry]

ensure all pc's have separate user names (!!) do use use mrkrad as the login for each computer it will cause problems.

Separate machine names yes, user names no. In fact, I had to create my Windows user account in Win7 with the same name and password as my share on my NAS in order to access it.

For whatever reason, simply prompting me for the share username and password didn't work. Win7 kept changing the username from a simple username to a domain-style ("machine\user") username, and the NAS wouldn't accept that. But under XP it was fine to prompt for the username/password.

 

[JackMDS]

Some 3rd party Firewall/Security suits, while working OK with Internet create trouble with Local Traffic.

Their philosophy (Notron/Kaspersky/McAfee, and others) is probably, ""I protect you from the Internet"", I do not much card what you do otherwise.

Some time disabling the Security is not enough, it still have processing running in background intercepting LAN taffic.

Network (so call mangers) like Bonjour, and Netwmagic, and others) are even worse.

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Many NICs if set to save Power go to sleep and do not wake-up there after.

Disable the Power Management of the NICs.

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If your Router can do IP reservation, use it.

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Permission in Vista/Win 7 is a little more complicated than Win XP make sure that they are set OK.

Permission and Security issues with Vista/Win7, check the following settings.

Point to the a Folder that meant to to be share. Right click and choose properties.

In the properties
Click on the Security tab shown in the pic bellow to the right) and check that the users and their permission (shown in the pic bellow center and left) are correctly configured. Then do the same to the Permission tab.
This screen shot is from Win 7, Vista's menus are similar.
http://www.ezlan.net/Win7/Permission-Security.jpg

In both the Security panel, and the Permission panel you have to highlight each User/Group and examine that the Permission Controls are checked correctly.

When everything is OK, Reboot the Network (Router, and computer).

* Note . The Groups and Users shown in the screen-shoot are just an example. Your list will look the way your system is configured.

**Note . All user that are allowed to share need to have account on the computers that they are allowed to connect to.Everyone is an account, it means a group of all of the users that already have an account and been established as users. It does not mean Everyone that feel that they would like to login.