Banging my head against the wall!

[James527]

I am having some problems with my network here at home it’s the first time I’ve really gotten a lot of devices hooked up to one network. On this network I have two desktop computers, a printer, and laptop (hooked up wirelessly) via a router holding everyone together. IP addresses are 192.168.1.1 (router), 192.168.1.100 (laptop), 192.168.1.101 (desk top), and 192.168.1.102 (printer) 192.168.1.103 desk top) we all share the subnet mask of 255.255.255.0. Aren't those public IP address that the DHCP server on my router is assigning the hosts? is that a potential conflict there?

All these computers can print to the printer and get online outside of the network. My question is this why can’t my computers see one another (Windows XP) in my network places? And when they can and I try to click on the computer it gives me an error message saying that the server is unavailable or that I don’t have permission to use this network resource making it totally useless to share files. The printer (as a host) dose not show up on any of the computers. Isn’t there a way to share files and folders by putting whatever you want to share into a share folder? And by the way once your at that point, can you post shortcuts to other parts of the computer there? Will they still work? Like for example I have movies and recorded tv on one computer. the share folder is located in the C drive which I keep small on purpose to minimize my problems with my OS so to move the movies one at a time onto the C drive for the other computers to be able to have access to is a pain in the ***. Can I post a shortcut there instead so that the other computers have access to all the files and folders? And once there can those same computers access other parts of my computer without me knowing?

If I do manage to get the computers on my network to see each other as peers or server/client environment how can I be secure in feeling that no one from the internet can see or share these files? How can I find out the public IP address that the router is using?
Any help on these issues would be appreciated thanks.

[johnwill]

192.168.x.x addresses are private IP addresses and that's normal for a router.

I can assure you that any standard SOHO router will not allow file sharing from the WAN side of the router, that's really not an issue.

As far as file sharing, top suspect would be a firewall.

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.

In the command prompt window that opens, type type 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:

• COM+ Event System (for WZC issues)
• Computer Browser
• DHCP Client
• DNS Client
• Network Connections
• Network Location Awareness
• Remote Procedure Call (RPC)
• Server
• TCP/IP Netbios helper
• Wireless Zero Configuration (XP wireless configurations)
• WLAN AutoConfig (Vista wireless configurations)
• 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.

If a service is not running, open it's properties and check the dependencies. Check each of the dependencies and see which one is preventing the service from running. Checking the event log is also a good idea here, there may be clues to what is failing.


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 Places (Network and Sharing Center in Vista), 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.