[Dredd]

I am about to freak out here!! My PC at school is not working with my girlfriend's PC on the other side of the dorm. We have been in the same workgroup for 2 months now and working great with our shared resources. But now they do not see each other and when we both switch to a different workgroups we see each other but can't access each other. This is not the first time I have experienced this. I had the same problem at home and just reformatted and reinstalled. Why is this happening?? I need the workgroup to function flawlessly. Seems Win2k is not network friendly! Please give any help you can. Thanks,

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Dredd
Webmaster of DreddNews
http://www.dreddnews.com

[CUViper]

It may be that your sys admins reconfigured the network so that you two are no longer on the same subnet

try accessing the machine by ip.... i.e. if her ip is 192.168.0.1, type \\192.168.0.1\ in the address bar of explorer

[Dredd]

Well I use pcAnywhere to work on my girlfriend's PC and that works fine. So we are able to ping each other and use pcAnywhere but not thru Network Neighborhood. I don't get it!

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Dredd
Webmaster of DreddNews
http://www.dreddnews.com

[kearos]

no, I think CUViper meant to say that you should try accessing her machine's file sharing through IP.

PC Anywhere would certainly work but we want to get file sharing working here, right?
So do what CUViper says and try "\\OTHER_MACHINE's_IP_goes_here\". That way, you'll know if you can access the other machine through TCP/IP file sharing.

Cheers

kearos

[Dredd]

Well I tried the idea you guys had and it worked for me to connect to her shares but when she tries to connect to my shares it tells me the network path is not found. What else can I do?????

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Dredd
Webmaster of DreddNews
http://www.dreddnews.com

[kearos]

are you both using Win2k?

do either of you have any firewall like ZoneAlarm or BlackICE Defender?

[CUViper]

hmmmm... try this: go to a command prompt on her computer and type this: net use \\your_ip\IPC$

If this works, then try to access your shares through explorer again. If it doesn't work, then copy the error message and paste it here for us to see. Also check the event log on both machines for anything related to networking.

[Dredd]

Yes both PC's are running Windows 2k Pro. With the command prompt I got "System Error 53 has occured" and "network path not found". And when I tried to view thru Network Neighborhood I get "network path not found". Hmmmm we both use BlackIce Defender. But I have been using that for weeks with no problems. And when I shut it down I still get the same errors.

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Dredd
Webmaster of DreddNews
http://www.dreddnews.com

[Dredd]

And here are some of the errors I am getting in Event Viewer

First off my PC:
1.) "The browser was unable to retrieve a list of servers from the browser master \\MONICA on the network \Device\NetBT_Tcpip_{35BA8100-BE28-4E08-B32E-4BF81C4BE0E7}. The data is the error code."

2.)"The browser service has failed to retrieve the backup list too many times on transport \Device\NetBT_Tcpip_{35BA8100-BE28-4E08-B32E-4BF81C4BE0E7}. The backup browser is stopping."

And my girlfriends PC has the same errors. Hope this helps some. Confusing to me!

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Dredd
Webmaster of DreddNews
http://www.dreddnews.com

[kearos]

Hi Dredd

I don't understand the errors you get in the events but I DO know that I had problems with BlackICE Defender 2.1.x with TCP/IP file sharing.

The FAQ at NetworkICE says that it should be okay if you put security to "Trusting" and enable "Allow Internet File Sharing". However, I haven't been able to get that solution to work. When BlackICE Defender is running and I try to use TCP/IP file sharing, I get exactly "Network path not found". As soon as I stop the service (or go Stop BlackICE Engine) then I can see, connect, do everything with no problems.

For me, I decided to use IPX (or Netbeui) to do file sharing because I don't like the idea of getting rid of BlackICE because I was certain it was what was causing my problem. Since then, IPX works great. Will your dorm network setup allow this?

I urge you to give BlackICE a quick try. Just stop the service or go to BlackICE and "Stop BlackICE Engine" on both computers. Then try \\the_IP\ again and see what happens.

Regards,

kearos

[Dredd]

I will go ahead and try NetBEUI and see how that works. Not sure how the school's network will react to that. I have totally closed BlackICE on both PC's and still I am having the same problem. What really gets me is that I was running this same setup last week with BlackICE and had no problems what-so-ever. I do believe something in that Event Viewer message about Computer Browser is the problem but I don't totally understand what the message is telling me to do.

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Dredd
Webmaster of DreddNews
http://www.dreddnews.com

[kearos]

okay.

I'm all out of ideas, I'm afraid.

Good luck with Netbeui.


Regards,

kearos

[ancker]

i use Black Ice aand have my settings on "cautious" and have allow tcp/ip AND allow netbios neighborhood...and i can do tcp/ip file sharing no problem..

one machine running win2kPro other win2kServer

Ancker

[felix]

Quote:

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Dredd:
And here are some of the errors I am getting in Event Viewer

First off my PC:
1.) "The browser was unable to retrieve a list of servers from the browser master \MONICA on the network \Device\NetBT_Tcpip_{35BA8100-BE28-4E08-B32E-4BF81C4BE0E7}. The data is the error code."

2.)"The browser service has failed to retrieve the backup list too many times on transport \Device\NetBT_Tcpip_{35BA8100-BE28-4E08-B32E-4BF81C4BE0E7}. The backup browser is stopping."

And my girlfriends PC has the same errors. Hope this helps some. Confusing to me!

</font>

Okay,
Error 1 refers to the fact that your machine is attempting to retrieve a network browse list from the machine named MONICA but is not receiving the list. This is not a great problem unless you cannot see any computers in Network N'hood. Then the owner of MONICA needs to sort out their master browser settings.

Error 2 is a consequence of error 1. Your machine is attempting to become a backup network browser using the browse list obtained from MONICA. It is unable to obtain this list and as a result it is choosing to stop being a backup browser. The device is your TCP/IP stuff (better word needed) of your LAN card.

By the sounds of it, MONICA is not distributing a browse list to the computers on the network which it should as part of being the master browser. This generally points to someone buggerising with the domain master settings in the registry or a corruption of some part of SAMBA or TCP/IP.

Hope this helps.

[clutch]

You don't have a WINS server do you? Master browsers are determined by:

1. OS type
2. "Age" on the network

Let's go up the food chain:

DOS/WFW, Win95, Win98, WinME, WinNT3.51 Workstation, WinNT3.51 Server, WinNT 4.0 Workstation, WinNT 4.0 Server, Win2K Pro, Win2K Server.

The Advanced and Datacenter types will be higher than the regular server would be. Now, if you have 2 Win2K servers on the same network, there may be an "election" forced to see who has the right to hold the master browse list. The box that has been booted up the longest wins. Now, this is using all the defaults and not tweaking anything. You can adjust wether a machine is capable of being a master browse list holder if you wish, but the best thing to do is setup a WINS box. NT/Win2K Server all for this, and it will hold all the name/IP translations for your network without the need for the browse master. The clients will have to be notified of the WINS IP (can be set manually or as part of the DHCP assigment) in order for this to work. But, once setup, network neighborhood performance is superior in a few ways:

1. Browsing speed increases because all the machines know where to go for name resolution information.

2. Reduction in master browse elections (just because some boxes may not get the hint, this still doesn't affect name resolution though).

3. Greater validity in Network Neighborhood listings. This is because when a machine shuts down, it advises the WINS server that it is going offline and gets removed from the list. With the master browse method, the master browser may not get notified of such a change. In addition, if a master browser shuts down, another machine may not be picked in time to carry over the function, and the caching of names may have to start over.

Windows NT/2K is far superior to Win9x in networking functionality. The problem is that most people don't know how it works. That's all, no big deal. Most environmnets that have WinNT boxes networked together also have at least one NT server. In the minimum, it will act as browse master, or would be setup as a WINS box.

If you are looking for a simple, effective solution to small network needs, try using NetBIOS over TCP/IP and LMHOSTS files on the client boxes. If the IPs are not static, then try to setup a WINS box if possible.

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Regards,

clutch

[This message has been edited by clutch (edited 12 March 2001).]

[Intlharvester]

This sounds like it could be caused by a duplicate IP address or NetBIOS name.

Another possibility is that you are on different subnets, and that they're filtering port 139 for security reasons. Depending on what ports are being filtered, it's possible that you can see but not touch.