• 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.

peer to peer networking issue Vista

Y

yadda

Senior member
I have 2 Vista boxes (PC1 and PC2) with sharing properly enabled. I am logging on with the same user account name and password on both. From PC 1 I have persistent mapped drives to 2 external drives on PC 2. I able to access these shares for a *few* days and they go off-line (Red X) unreachable. I am also unable to reach any regular file shares on PC 2 from PC 1. There is also a printer that is shared off PC 2 that I am unable to reach.

Here is the kicker: I am able to browse the Internet fine from from a browser on PC 1 so networking is working in a way. I have already reloaded PC 1 thinking there was a corrupt file causing this and within a few days I was back in the same shape. Unable to reach shares or printer on PC 2 from PC 1 .
Both machines use wireless NICs so I am going to try and use a different NIC in Box 1 and see what happens.

Other suggestions???

What the heck is going on????
 
You can get to the net from PC1, meaning it has a valid IP and an active ethernet or wireless link, and can talk to the gateway router. So the transport is all working for PC1, but what about PC2?

When the outage occurs can you ping PC2 from PC1 by name? If not, can you ping it by IP? If you can't ping it by name then it's likely that Windows File and Printer Sharing will not be working right. If you can't ping it by IP then you need to check the ipconfig on PC2 and make sure it has an active link and a valid IP.

From my experience on my own lan most issues with file and printer sharing, assuming a good network stack and config on all the clients, are caused by inconsistent name resolution. Checking the config is important because there are settings (workgroup name, simple file sharing, security settings) that can have a big impact on whether sharing works. Most of these are binary problems: it either works or it doesn't. If you're having intermittent problems name resolution is often the issue.

The cheapest and easiest way to resolve this is to: a) assign your internal systems a static IP at the router; and b) on each system place an entry in the windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts file for each of the internal machines. If you do this then Windows networking will always be able to resolve a machine name to an accurate internal IP.
 
I have fixed it tonight (I wish I knew how). I started modifying settings
and it worked. Damnit. I wish I knew what setting fixed it.

I will say I *cannot* ping either machine by netbios name from a command
prompt. They resolve their IP but they can't ping each other by host name. I am sad to say I am a network administrator by trade. 😱

The Windows firewall is disabled on both machines. Being desperate I have
even disabled WEP.

Any suggestions. I still believe something will go awry again.

T
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Back
Top