Vista on home network - what the hell!?!?!?!?

[stuman74]

Allright, sorry for the brash title. But I am so frustrated with my home network. Here's my setup:

1.) Dell 1521 Laptop/Vista Home Premium/Wireless
2.) Dell 530 Desktop/Vista Home Premium/Wireless
2.) Dell 530s Desktop/Vista Home Premium/Wireless
2.) Dell 530s Desktop/Vista Home Premium/Wireless

They all are connected to the same wireless router.

Each has a different user name (with admin rights) and no password.

In the network and sharing center on all of the computers:
Same network
Same workgroup
Private network
Network Discovery is On
File Sharing is On
Printer Sharing is On (even though only one has actual printers)
Password Protected Sharing is Off

McAfee (free from Comcast) is installed on all computers. Everything enabled, except for firewall which is using the standard Windows Vista Firewall (had the McAfee firewall running, but all are off at the moment with the windows one enabled).

The 530 (#2) has a couple of printers that are shared on the network. It also has the music/videos/photos for the family that are shared to all of the networked computers. File sharing from the 530 seems to be working fine and is mapped by all of the other computers.
However, the printers come up, are accessed, and print EXTREMELY slow. I mean, it takes forever to print a test page much less anything else. Back when I had a couple of XP machines, it was just about as fast as printing from the host computer. I just don't understand why it's so slow where it's become practically unusable. I don't recall any changes to my system aside from Windows updates.

Also, on computers 1, 3, and 4, even though I select certain folders to be shared, they cannot be accessed by any of the four computers. From any of the four computers, I can view the shared folder being present, but when I go to open it, it says that the folder is available, but the user account that I am logged on with was denied access. I do not know what is set differently nor where on computer #2 that allows everyone to view the folders without any issues.

I am going nuts trying to straighten this network out with the goals being:
A.) Print from any PC without some LONG delay.
B.) Share any folder I want between any of the computers.

I've searched this forum and google and have done a number of tweaks, but I just can't get this to work like it should. Your help and tips in this thread are much appreciated!

Let me know if there are any other key details or parameters that I need to include as well.

Thanks!

 

[Spicedaddy]

try using the same user name on each computer, that should help with the B) part.

Printer, I don't know. How's the wireless signal on those computers?

 

[stuman74]

Originally posted by: Spicedaddy
try using the same user name on each computer, that should help with the B) part.

Printer, I don't know. How's the wireless signal on those computers?

Thanks for the reply. One thing I discovered is that it appears that Vista does not like to share certain types of folders or drives (if it's a user folder for example). Setting it to other folders or drives, it seems I can get to.

Wireless signal strength is pretty good on all of the computers. Files transfer at about 1.5 MB/s (wireless-G to wireless G). Used to be really good for the printers...I don't know what recently changed to make it a dog to print from the networked computers.

 

[rasczak]

try making sure that you have the print spooler set to print while spooling vs printing after spooling. can't remember off the top of my head where that may be though.

 

[stuman74]

I saw those selections in the printer options somewhere as well. Didn't have any impact actually.

I think I DID find out the problem. The firmware on my router! I have a D-Link DIR-655. Worked fine, but at the same time I made the other changes adding computers, I updated the firmware. BIG MISTAKE! You would think the newer firmware would be better but it was a dog! I just rolled back to 1.11 and it works fast and without issues! I don't know what feature or parameter in the firmware caused this, but after rolling it back, I'm leaving it alone!