Thank you very much for the detailed instructions. I plan to try them
tomorrow. But as of now (not turning the zone alarm firewall off), I
don't see any place to click as you suggest in My Network Places. My
computer is the one with Windows XP Home.
In My Network Places, I see two folders shown in the Internet pane.
These are "(C) on <my computer's name>" and "DownloadFile on <my
computer's name>.
Clicking on the link "View Network Connections" I see a dialup
connection, an Internet Gateway connection, and four "LAN or High Speed
Internet" connections: (1) Local Area Connection Connected, (2) and (3)
1394 Connections, and (4) Bluetooth Network (cable unplugged).
Clicking on "View Workgroup Computers" there is only my computer listed.
I do not see a link to "View Entire Network" nor a link to "Microsoft
Windows Network."
BTW, after I ran Network Setup Wizard on my computer, each time I tried
to access a web page from FF browser, the dialup connection or the
Bluetooth connection would try to be opened at random instead of my
cable connection (from the router). I had to restore the system to stop
this behavior. Yes, I turned off the Windows firewall after using the
wizard.
Larry Sacks wrote:
I'm going to be to differ with this statement.
Home and Professional are really similar. The main difference for
networking is Home doesn't recognize a domain whereas Professional does.
Also, home doesn't require a password for an account, but Professional
does, but even these "problems" can be overcome too.
You've already done the first - made sure both computers are in the same
workgroup.
So, let's go to the next thing:
1. Is the Windows Firewall turned on? If it is, turn it off on both
systems.
--> (Go to Control Panel,
o If it's in Category View, double-click "Security Center",
o Click to "Manage Settings for Windows Firewall" and click
the radio button next to "Off (not recommended)"
o If it's in "Classic View", double-click "Windows Firewall"
and click the radio button next to "Off (not recommended)"
2. If Windows Firewall is already off, check your anti-virus software
(you are running anti-virus software, aren't you?) and turn off the
firewall - McAfee and Symantec (Norton) both call it their "Personal
Firewall" (IIRC). Yes, turning off the firewall could be "bad" but it's
probably also what's preventing both computers from seeing each other
since the A/V or Firewall software considers each computer a threat and
prevents them from talking to each other.
If that fixes it, then poke around in the settings for the Firewall.
There should be a setting to identify a network as a "home" or "trusted"
network and allow traffic. If you know the IP address range for your
router, you can set it to allow IPs in that range to have access. (See
the next paragraph to figure out your IP address - if you already know,
just skip to the paragraph following that)
To find out your IP address:
o Click Start/Run and enter "CMD" and click "OK"
o This is the "Command prompt" or the DOS prompt (even though that's
technically an incorrect term). The prompt will be something like
C:\Documents and Settings\"your username">
o Type: "ipconfig" and press <ENTER>
o You'll get about 6 lines on the screen. The line you're most
interested in is "IP Address". It'll probably be something like
192.168.0.2
o Do this on both computers. Make a note of both and then type:
o "exit" and press the "enter" key on both systems. That will exit you
from the Command prompt.
Once you've got your IP addresses, then you should set the firewall
software on both systems to ignore traffic from systems in those IP
address ranges. Or, if you think you're going to add more computers in
the future, make the address range good for say 10 computers - such as
192.168.0.2 through 192.168.0.12 .
Once this is done, try going to "My Network Places", Click on "Entire
Network" and then "Microsoft Windows Network". Give it a few minutes
because it has to refresh from the master browser.
If it still doesn't work, try this:
3. Are the username and password the same on both computers? If not,
when you go to access one computer from the other, you'll be prompted
for the username and password. XP Home doesn't require a password, but
XP Professional does. You can either hack the registry to remove that
requirement (not all that hard) or just change your user account on the
XP Home system and put the *same* password onto that account.
Give these steps a try and let us know what happens....
Larry
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