Why can't my laptop see my PC?

The_B_Man

I have a home LAN.

PC is wired to my LinkSys WRT54GS,
laptop is wireless to my LinkSys WRT54GS,
My LinkSys WRT54GS is connected to NTL cable modem (200).

PC has shared folders,
Laptop has shared folders.

PC can see laptops shared folders,
Laptop CANNOT see PC's shared folders.

Both can ping each other.

Turned windows firewall off,

Turned zonealarm off on PC,
Turned McAfee firewall plus off on laptop

access denied message

tried hooking laptop up wired to router,
same result.

the PC can get into laptop perfect,
laptop cannot get into PC at all!

I installed NETBIOS on both machines.

Is there anything else i can try?

thanks.

DonkeyStyle \o/

Yesh, from the laptop, open an exporer window and stick in \\the.ip.of.the.pc\c$
You should at least get some kind of prompt/error as opposed to just not seeing the shares.

I've had a weird problem with this before aswell, which I've posted about before... have a look in your PCs Local Security Settings (secpol.msc) under:
Local Policies > User Rights Assignment >> Access this computer from the network -- and stick your laptops logged in user in there, or add 'Everyone' to the list (should be there by default as far as I can figure).
The above should work if the PC is moaning about the laptop not having sufficient privileges or whatever... and you should be able to find out what's eating it by doing the \ip\$sharename thing.

Personally I hate windows shares, they're so feckin finnicky, I can't be arsed with them any more... it's USB keydrive all the way. \o/

[edit] oops, just re-read your post... "access denied message", yeah certainly have a poke around secpol.msc in that case (on the PC).

spiritboy

i take it you're using a workgroup so both users need to be set up on both PCs. even if you don't actually use a username on the PC to sign in as it is probably signing in as user or admin. try setting up identical users on both machines and then accessing \\pcname\C$ from the laptop and \\laptopname\c$ from the PC if you can do that then you're sorted. you just need to sort our permissions for the shared folders on each machine.

The_B_Man

both are on mshome.
from the laptop, if i try \\ip\c$ i get a login box with pcname\Guest as the user, but its greyed out so i cant change it. also i have no guest password or anything set up.

from the PC to laptop, "\\ip\C$ not found, check spelling and try again"

both firewalls are off. not jsut disabled but right click -> exit on both. windows firewall defo off.

quaidox

make sure the guest account is not disabled on the pc, as it is by default.
also does the account you are logged in with on the laptop have local admin rights??

The_B_Man

guest count is enabled.
laptop account is an admin.

i jsut updated the firmware of me wrt54gs.
gonna try again now.
also, i have NETBEUI installed on both machines.
jsut removed them.
ill try again now.

thebman

The_B_Man wrote:

both are on mshome.
from the laptop, if i try \\ip\c$ i get a login box with pcname\Guest as the user, but its greyed out so i cant change it. also i have no guest password or anything set up.

from the PC to laptop, "\\ip\C$ not found, check spelling and try again"

both firewalls are off. not jsut disabled but right click -> exit on both. windows firewall defo off.

Guest account must be enabled.

There is no password for guest account.
Turning on simple file sharing should enable the guest account.

Then retry using the ip (which you can get using ipconfig), do above and if still not found then access a directory further in (e.g. \\ip\C$\music) as windows maybe refusing you shared access to C:\ for other reasons.

I know when I setup ours on our home computers, it was a secondary partition on e:\ and I had to access \e$\music\ because it wouldn't allow me to access the e:\ except on my machine with XP Professional.

I had no idea why it was happening.

The_B_Man

well i had simple file sharing on but turned it off. is simple file sharing recommended? and i dont mean jsut the "(recommended)" thing beside it.

also, i checked in services.msc -> local users and guest is definately on.

The_B_Man

wait, the laptop is xp home sp2. would that make a difference?


EDIT!! OH MY ****ING GOD YES!!

enable ICS on the network cable connected to the router! ya beauty!


http://www.practicallynetworked.com/sharing/xp/filesharing.htm