omg. xp networking pwned me.
 

ok. I have 4 computers networked in my house. Two workstations in the basement that WERE running 98se, a print server running 98se, and a old ibm p100 running 95 upstairs for the non-computery people in the house. I upgraded both of the basement workstations to xp. Now, the 3 in the basement are connected to a linksys router, and through that, to a cable modem. A cable runs upstairs to a linksys hub that splits off to the old pc, and a ps2. ALL of the computers and the ps2 can reach the internet without a problem. The two older machines with 98se and 95 on 'em network/file share fine. HOWEVER! The xp machines are whores, and cannot browse the workgroup. The error i get is....

theworkgroupname is not acessible. You might not have permission to use this network resource. Contact the administrator of this server to find out if you have access permissions.

The list of servers for this workgroup is not currently available.

HELP! I need to share printers/files and this is very frustrating.

Solutions I have tried: The network setup assistant on the three computers in teh basement. No GOOD!

I tried pinging the other machines by ip from the prompt, and they responded, but when i try by computer name NIENTE!

I tried making one of the xp machines have the "computer browser" service started and not the other, and restarted all machines. NADA!

I don't know what else to try. any ideas?

XP is anti-social. good luck.

Make sure any firewalls are set to the lowest security setting and then disabled.. Some of them will continue to block ports after you disable them so doing that alone will not suffice.

I have a LOT of experience with computers, but getting Windows boxes to talk to each other reliably has been a very rare experience for me. Often after several hours of messing around I'll get everything to work until one of them is rebooted or I just wait a few hours, then it craps out.

The only way I've found to reliably network computers is to run Linux on all of them, but that's probably not the answer you wanted to hear. :)

are you sure you are all assigned ot the same workgroup?

I have found that in order to look at a winxp system from a win me or earlier version you need to make sure that whomever is logged in has a login for that 2000 or xp system

brian

I had this same problem today. Infact I've always had that problem with XP but I always thought it was somehow due to the fact that my XP was a warez copy. That wasn't the case today.
I hate XP networking. You have to use the wizard and it almost never works!!! Gah!!!

make sure if icf is on that you open the ports for sharing, 135-139, tcp/udp

no master browser, start the computer browser service on one of the xp computers.

workgroup and domain names are different, set them all the same