• Welcome to Overclockers Forums! Join us to reply in threads, receive reduced ads, and to customize your site experience!

Troubles in Nottingham (Networking)

Overclockers is supported by our readers. When you click a link to make a purchase, we may earn a commission. Learn More.

lemings

Member
Joined
Oct 10, 2005
Location
Texas
I'm trying to set my self up a home network using 3 XP machines one of which is a laptop. I managed to get the two PCs hooked up just fine and they are registering with one another. The laptop however is just not showing up. I pinged one of the PCs using the laptop and it came back just fine, so any suggestions for getting my laptop to show up? (Nottingham is the workgroup name for those of you wondering why I put that in the title :D)
 
All are wired through ethernet. Turned off all firewalls thinking that may have been the cause, but no luck. As for the workgroup, yes its the same exact name. I tried the default Mshome also but that failed also. Is there perhaps a way I can just transfer files through the command prompt, as that is the only thing I really need to do on the laptop.

Thanks for helping btw.
 
Have you run the network wizard on all the computers? Once you do that, a shared folder should show up for each of the computers in your network.

Windows is notorious for sometimes taking a while to 'find' every other computer on a peer to peer network. For best results, click START>My Network Places.

If My Network Places is not on your start menu, you probably have not run the networking wizard. Once My Network Places window is open select from the pull-down menu View>Refresh (at the bottom) or just hit F5 which does the same thing. Sometimes that will force Windows to find everything on the network.
 
If your notebook has the IP 192.168.10.11 and has the share "sharename", use the IP like this in the addressbar of explorer:

\\192.168.10.11\sharename
 
I have ran the wizard on all systems (manually that is). I do in fact have "My Networking Places" displayed in the start menu, but still, no sign of the laptop shared files. Thanks again for all the help.
 
lemings said:
All are wired through ethernet. Turned off all firewalls thinking that may have been the cause, but no luck. As for the workgroup, yes its the same exact name. I tried the default Mshome also but that failed also. Is there perhaps a way I can just transfer files through the command prompt, as that is the only thing I really need to do on the laptop.

Thanks for helping btw.

Just to double check, are you using a router? If not you'll need to bridge the network connections on which ever computer is going to be the server. Also under Control Panel->Folder Options->View ensure that "Use Simple File Sharing" and "Automatically Search for Network Folders and Printers" is checked on all the PCs.

*EDIT*
Just thought of something else. You might want to make sure all three have the same security updates applied. I'm bad about not reading exact details of every update, but I've noticed a few relating to network connectivity. Most were 64bit->32bit fixes, but there may be something in there that would address your issue.
 
Hmm, interesting views guys, will give them a try when I get the chance. I will try creating the setup disk :) Although, I have always done it manually :D. Feedback is appreciated guys!
 
Back