a recent file and printer sharing issue, possibly firewall related

[TheAtheist]

Hi, i dont often post in networking forums, as my forte is in offline and Win XP support i feel, but i've been having problems recently with file sharing within our home network. The setup is 3 desktops, 2 with lan connections to an ADSL router, and mine which is on a wireless connection to the router. We can all get onto the internet, but none of us currently can get onto Shared network folders. We get the following error:

\\(computer)\(folder shared) is not accessible. YOu might not have permission to use this network rescource. Contact the administrator of this server to find out if you have access permissions.

The network path was not found

One of the lan pcs and the wireless one have Zone alarm(free edition) and the main pc will also have this later.

I have tried several things, such as pinging the two other pcs and i got a response from both with 0% loss on the packets.

I then procceded to uninstall zonealarm and i could access the shared folders on one of the pcs(didnt try the other)

Obviously, no firewall isnt safe, especially as we are all internet connected. Any ideas on how, in Zone alarm, i can allow the specific IP addresses of these other two computers, and the same on the other two, as i think this will work.

Cheers

[TheAtheist]

After a bit of tampering with settings and resetting the network back to default settings, most problems appear fixed, apart from one crucial one. I can access shared files on both the other computers, and they can access shared files on each of the other pcs on LAN, but neither of them can see/access shared files on my pc. I'm the one on wireless. Any ideas. Cheers

[TheAtheist]

Right, this is very odd, back at square one, noone can access anyone elses files. we setup a wireless network instead of a normal network, this didnt help, so we went back to create a new network using the same initial proccedure, back at square one!!!!

This is really infuriating, there seems to be no logic to the problems that we are getting

[johnwill]

First off, the risk without a firewall isn't that severe, since you have a hardware incoming firewall in the router. I've run the systems here without a firewall for years, the router's NAT layer keeps me quite safe.

You should be able to get a configuration of ZA to allow file/print sharing, you need to put the subnet of your local LAN in the trusted zone.