n0tepad

thanks johnwill

i have 3 machines on my lan. one desktop (vista ultimate), one laptop (vista business) and one htpc (xp mce 2005). the desktop is wired and the other two are wireless.

just to be sure, i found my 10/100 switch and set the lan up so ALL machines were wired - the sharing problem remained the same. note also that this network functioned perfectly for about a year when suddenly one day my laptop couldnt send prints jobs to the shared printer.

the two wireless machines share perfectly all round. the wired machine will read and write files to the wireless ones when it initiates the requests however, if a wireless machine wants to read or write to the wired machine, nothing happens. refer ping results below;

desktop ping desktop - ok (192.168.0.2)
desktop ping laptop - ok
desktop ping htpc - ok

laptop ping laptop - ok (192.168.0.3)
laptop ping htpc - ok
laptop ping desktop - FAIL

htpc ping htpc - ok (192.168.0.4)
htpc ping laptop - ok
htpc ping desktop - FAIL

the desktop machine is not acknowledging any requests from other machines on the network.

*windows firewall is OFF
*bitdefender AV 2009 has no firewall. besides, the laptop runs the exact same copy of bitdefender av 2009 (3 user licence) with the same settings and it has no problem.

legend status to the solver is this micro$oft drama.