Network - can access other PC, but not vice versa

[BushRaider]

Hey all,

You have all probably seen this type of problem before, and I'm sure that somehwere on this site is the answer, but I cannot find anything to point me in teh right direction.

My pal and I have near identical PC's, both "home made", but of reasonable quality:

Asus A7n8E Delux mobo
AMD Athlon XP 3000
2Gb DDR333
Radeon 9800 Pro
Creative Soundblaster 5.1
various IDE & Sata drives

Now, about 3 months ago, being a bit childish (I'm 31), we set up a LAN at my house using my Netgear switch, with a view to playing a bit of BF2 amongst other things, and did the usual file swapping etc via shared docs, and had no probs at all.
This weekend, we both had some free time and thought it would be a laugh to do it again. This is where the problem started - I can view his shared docs/folders with no issues at all, I can stick files in there and take them out again. He, however, can't even see my PC on his "Network Places", let alone access my shared docs. Everytime he tries to access my PC he gets a permission denied error.
We re-ran the newtowrk wizard with a new workgroup name, changed my PC's "identity" as we thought that there was a duplicate PC "name" (he has been on a few other LANs recently) in his network places. All to no avail.

Any ideas? I can post whatever info you need. This is driving me nuts, and I really don't fancy re-installing windows etc all over again (just spent most of the weekend building another PC for another pal, and am sick of installing windows, sp2 etc!!)

Incidentally, while I think about it, using the network explorer thing, he can see my PC, but when we double-click to drill-down, we get the same message. He CAN access my shared files via "start", "run" etc, but this is so long winded it's not true!

[keymaker]

do you both have firewalls on your computers? also tell your friend to ping your computer.

[rajthampi]

Originally Posted by BushRaider

Hey all,

You have all probably seen this type of problem before, and I'm sure that somehwere on this site is the answer, but I cannot find anything to point me in teh right direction.

My pal and I have near identical PC's, both "home made", but of reasonable quality:

Asus A7n8E Delux mobo
AMD Athlon XP 3000
2Gb DDR333
Radeon 9800 Pro
Creative Soundblaster 5.1
various IDE & Sata drives

Now, about 3 months ago, being a bit childish (I'm 31), we set up a LAN at my house using my Netgear switch, with a view to playing a bit of BF2 amongst other things, and did the usual file swapping etc via shared docs, and had no probs at all.
This weekend, we both had some free time and thought it would be a laugh to do it again. This is where the problem started - I can view his shared docs/folders with no issues at all, I can stick files in there and take them out again. He, however, can't even see my PC on his "Network Places", let alone access my shared docs. Everytime he tries to access my PC he gets a permission denied error.
We re-ran the newtowrk wizard with a new workgroup name, changed my PC's "identity" as we thought that there was a duplicate PC "name" (he has been on a few other LANs recently) in his network places. All to no avail.

Any ideas? I can post whatever info you need. This is driving me nuts, and I really don't fancy re-installing windows etc all over again (just spent most of the weekend building another PC for another pal, and am sick of installing windows, sp2 etc!!)

Incidentally, while I think about it, using the network explorer thing, he can see my PC, but when we double-click to drill-down, we get the same message. He CAN access my shared files via "start", "run" etc, but this is so long winded it's not true!

Please state whether both computers were upgraded to SP2 recently. Widely noticed that once upgraded to SP2 many clients had problems with accessing previously accessed folders and files among them. So please check 'Network Access:Do not allow anonymous enumeration of SAM accounts and shares' (which you can find under Adminisrative Tools->Local Policies->Security Options) and incase if this option is enabled (SP2 make this option enabled during upgrade most of the times) disable it in both the PCs.
But prior performing this exercise make sure both PCs can ping each other as the other person recommended.
Once 'Network Access:Do not allow anonymous enumeration of SAM accounts and shares' option is disabled, and if you've the same problem accessing shared folders and documents, disable sharing of those folders and documents, restart the PC and enable sharing once again and post the status here.

Regards

[BushRaider]

Originally Posted by keymaker

do you both have firewalls on your computers? also tell your friend to ping your computer.

Hi there - yes, both running the windows firewall (which gets configuered during the network wizard, right?); but have tried this with the firewalls enabled & disabled, but no joy.

Also, both running NAV 2005 as part of Sysworks 2005, but not teh internet worm protection thing. Thats just irritating! keeps popping up "permit" screens when usng several progs, particulalry skype, although it's set to allow it.

Will have to try the ping test at the weekend.

Thanks for the response.

[BushRaider]

Both PC's have SP2, and are fully updated, and nothing significant has changed since the last time we set up the LAN other than I put a new SATA drive in about a fortnight ago, along with a new DVD-RW and CD-RW, but all the original kit is still in there.

It just strikes me as odd that nothing significant has changed, yet we get this problem. I had another friends PC hooked up to mine recently whilst he was upgrading some bits and pieces, just so that he could shove his millions of photos etc onto my system rather than burn a bunch of DVD's, and had no problems.

My other pal (the one I have issues with), has been on several other LANS over the past few weeks, and is not reporting any problems with them.

I'll check the points you suggest and let you know the score!

Thanks for your advice, and take it easy.