[SOLVED] Wierd! - File and print sharing takes vacation on home network after securit

[jhgreene]

First of all, sorry this is going to be long, but I will really appreciate the help.

I'm running a little home network with 2 Windows boxes, a printer, and a Linksys wireless router. The box that the printer is connected to is running XP Home edition, while the other box is running XP Pro.

The other day, I secured my network by setting up the router and both boxes to use WPA-PSK network authentication and TKIP encryption. All seemed to be working fine, although I did not really try file sharing after that. A few days later, I found that the Pro box was not seeing itself as part of my home network. After some trial and error, I decided to run the Network setup wizard on both boxes. This got my internet connection back for both boxes (which had been dropped for some reason), but I still have a problem. The Home box is supposed to be sharing the printer and a file folder on the network, but the Pro box cannot see the folder nor can it print (error message when I try to print says that the printer spooler service is not running, but it is - I checked). But a shared folder on my Pro box can be seen and accessed just fine by my Home box.

Also, and I can't explain this either, I can no longer access local files on my Pro box thru Firefox - like I want to load up a local html file I wrote to test out some javascript, but Firefox hangs when I do a File-->File Open. Also, when I try to upload an image to eBay, Firefox hangs when I click on the Browse button in their upload interface. I do not have this local file access problem in IE, nor do I have it at all on the Home box in either browser. I can't help but think all these problems are somehow related to securing my home network, but I have no idea right now why. So, in summary, all problems seem to be with my Pro box, but thank goodness at least it can see the router to get to the internet and share a folder to the network - it just can't print or see my Home box.

BTW, I know I probably don't need to say this, but all these things used to work fine - file and printer sharing, uploading and accessing local files, etc. before I secured my home network. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

- Joe

[johnwill]

Turn off any firewalls for debugging. If the firewall is the problem, you'll have to configure it to allow access to "trusted zone" addresses. Note that some firewalls must be completely uninstalled to stop them from affecting your networking.

Hold the Windows key and press R, then type CMD to open a command prompt for the following commands:

PING each remote computer by IP address, and if successful, PING by name. Open a command prompt as described above and type.

PING <ip address>
or
PING <computer name>

Where:
<ip address> - is the x.x.x.x IP address
<computer name> - is the computer name

A failure to PING is almost always a firewall configuration issue. Any failure to PING needs to be corrected before you go any farther.

Note: You can obtain the IP address and computer name of a computer by opening a command prompt (DOS window) and typing IPCONFIG /ALL. This should work for any Windows version. The IPCONFIG /ALL display will provide a wealth of useful information for debugging your network connection.

Check your Services are Started on all PCs:

• Computer Browser
• DHCP Client
• DNS Client
• Network Connections
• Network Location Awareness
• Remote Procedure Call (RPC)
• Server
• TCP/IP Netbios helper
• Workstation

Note: You can check the services in Control Panel, Administrative Tools, Services.

All of these services should be started, and their startup type should be automatic.

All computers should be in the same workgroup for computer browsing to function properly. File & Print Sharing has to be enabled on any computer you wish to share files or printers from. You also need to actually share the resource in question from My Computer, right click on the drive/printer/folder, and select sharing.

If you encounter difficulties accessing computers that are visible in Network Neighborhood, make sure the computer being accessed has an account with the same name/password as the system connecting to it uses to login.

While the default NetBIOS setting is correct for normal network configurations, it's possible for it to be altered, and it costs nothing to make sure it's correct. NETBIOS over TCP/IP must be enabled for normal network browsing.

[jhgreene]

Thanks for the extensive reply. I have done all you suggest, and you were exactly right about the firewall being the problem. The symptoms seem to be a little different on my XP Home box versus my XP Pro box, though. In order to be able to print from my Pro box, and for the Pro box to be able to see folders shared from my Home box, I had to turn off the internet connection firewall on my Home box. I don't like this very much, so is there a simple solution for me to be able to have my firewall enabled on my Home box and still be able to share folders and the printer across my home network?

Once again, thanks for your in-depth response. I appreciate the time you took.

- Joe

[johnwill]

You're welcome. Firewalls are the most frequent cause of these issues, that's why it's first.