Windows Home Network Sucks!

kayson

Member

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Joined

Jan 5, 2005

• Dec 19, 2006

• #1

I have filesharing enabled on all of my family's PCs so we can transfer files and music easily. Unfortunately, XP sucks. Half of the time, the PCs don't see each other. Occasionally I'll get lucky and be able to get into a computer. My brother's computer has a lot of music on it, and whenever I try to get into the folder, the explorer window crashes on me. What gives??!?! Is there a way to fix this.

 

DanFraser

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Joined

Mar 6, 2002

Location

Derby UK

• Dec 19, 2006

• #2

I'd open services.msc and dig around to see what is not running. Read through the descriptions. Also, a DHCP network is lots of fun with this kind of stuff, make sure you are using static internal IP's if you can.

 

MVC

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Joined

Dec 20, 2004

Location

Hell's Kitchen, NYC

• Dec 19, 2006

• #3

Second the static IPs. For a computer that doesn't get moved around like a laptop, there is no reason to not give it a "permanent" IP address. Check your router's instructions for how to set static IPs.

 

M

Madwand

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Joined

Dec 20, 2006

• Dec 20, 2006

• #4

The Windows network browser is known to be problematic. The usual recommendation is to use drive mappings instead.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308582

 

seadave77

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Joined

Jul 20, 2002

Location

Newnan, GA

• Dec 20, 2006

• #5

But don't you have to have XP Pro to share?

Welcome to the forums!

 

M

Madwand

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Joined

Dec 20, 2006

• Dec 20, 2006

• #6

No, you can share using XP Home as well, although the feature set isn't as good as in W2K / XP Pro.

But I'm not really sure about the "simplified file sharing" stuff, because I always turn it off...

Thanks!

 

Lancelot

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Joined

Feb 12, 2001

Location

the Netherlands

• Dec 24, 2006

• #7

Don't bother with static IP's and stuff. 9 out of 10 times problems like these are caused by various firewall/antivir software running on the different PC's. If you're behind a router with firewall, all you need is XP SP2's windows firewall enabled (it's actually not that bad) and the same workgroup name on all systems...

 

gearhead1972

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Joined

Dec 7, 2002

• Dec 30, 2006

• #8

I wouldn’t say XP sucks. I have 7 machines at my house and 6 machines at my girlfriend’s house. My laptop adds 1 to each when ever I am at that location. I share between all 14 machines flawlessly. 3 are XP pro, 1 MCE, 1 win98, rest are XP Home. You need to look into other areas other then "XP Sucks"
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/digitalphotography/prophoto/synctoy.mspx is great for syncing tons of music between machines.

 

Last edited: Dec 30, 2006

asusradeon

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Joined

Oct 25, 2004

Location

127.0.0.1

• Jan 1, 2007

• #9

kayson said:

I have filesharing enabled on all of my family's PCs so we can transfer files and music easily. Unfortunately, XP sucks. Half of the time, the PCs don't see each other. Occasionally I'll get lucky and be able to get into a computer. My brother's computer has a lot of music on it, and whenever I try to get into the folder, the explorer window crashes on me. What gives??!?! Is there a way to fix this.

Click to expand...

i also got this problem alot :S

 

Randyman...

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Joined

May 8, 2004

• Jan 1, 2007

• #10

Never had an issue here. I always run the Network Setup Wizard on all PC's, and everything works fine - including copying my 160GB Music Library across the LAN, and Printer Sharing. I al so use the SP2 Firewall (behind a NAT Router, of course).

Yup - it must be the fact that "Windows Home Networking Sucks"

 

Mr.Guvernment

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Joined

Feb 26, 2003

• Jan 2, 2007

• #11

17 compsin off, all XP pro with 3 home comps and no issues, for me it was usually my router, i reset my router and things would work again.

 

P

PLOBBY

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Joined

Aug 2, 2004

• Jan 2, 2007

• #12

9 computers here at home, all work flawlessly with shared folders/mapped network drives.