One of the most infuriating aspects of having a home or small business network can be the network itself. Sometimes you run into snags. This can be caused by many, many factors, but let me run through some of the more common ones.
Turn your firewall off. Now, let me qualify that statement. If you have a computer that is directly hooked up to a cable modem or dsl modem, then don’t do this. You will be unprotected on the internet. However, if you are behind a router, then you can go ahead and turn off your firewall. Check the windows firewall and any other firewall that might be running. That includes Norton Internet Security and McAfee Security Suite. You have to do this on all the computers that you want to share. Now, if you aren’t comfortable with turning it off, you can set up rules to allow netbios traffic (this is what allows you to share stuff). But absolutely do not do this if you are connected directly to the internet!! Netbios utilizes ports 135, 139, and 445. That will take care of most sharing problems. But if you’re still stuck, let’s press on.
Another thing you will want to check is that you have printer and file sharing enabled. Go to “Start,” “Control Panel,” and “Network Connections.” In here you will see your “Local Area Connection.” Right click on that and select “Properties.” Now, you will see a white box with a bunch of stuff in it. Make sure “File and Printer Sharing for Microsoft Networks” is in there. You also need “Client for Microsoft Networks.” If you do not have these, you need to go to “Install” and select “Clients.” In there you will find “Client for Microsoft Networks.” You can also go to “Install” and “Services” to install “File and Printer Sharing for Microsoft Networks.” Go ahead and restart your computer. Some of you will rejoice and some of you will be out of luck again.
Sometimes your tcpip stack or winsock is royally hosed. Yes, that’s a technical term. You can find some helps on my recent tcpip and winsock troubleshooting post. Give that a whirl. Now, make sure your computers are in the same workgroup. You can find this by going to “Start,” “Control Panel,” and “System.” You will see a “computer name” tab – click it. This will show your workgroup. If it’s not in the right workgroup, you can push the “Change” button and enter a new one. And now, let’s roll up our hands and do some harder looking.
Click on “Start,” go to “Run,” and type “cmd” in the box. Click “Ok.” This will bring up the black box. In the black box, type “net view.” If you get an error when this comes up, then you have an issue still with printer and file sharing, your workgroup, or something similar. Now, go to the other machine that you are trying to connect to. Make sure that the firewall there is turned off and that file and printer sharing is turned on. Now, get the ip address and computer name of this machine. You can find the ip address by doing this. Click on “Start,” go to “Run,” type “cmd,” and click “ok.” Now, at the line simply type “ipconfig” and press enter. You should now see your ip address. Let’s go back to the other computer. At the black box, type “ping ” and enter the ip address from the other machine. So, for example, you would type “ping 192.168.1.46.” If that was the other computer’s ip address. If you get four replies, then you are indeed on the same network. If you don’t get a reply, either a firewall is blocking the ping request or the other computer isn’t on the same network. You would then check this computer’s ip address by typing this in the black box “ipconfig.” If it’s something like 192.168.1.56, with a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0, then you are on the same subnet, but something is blocking the request. Now, try pinging the other machine by it’s netbios name, or computer name. This is the name that you grabbed earlier. Simply type this into the black box “ping othercomputername.” Obviously, you want to make sure you replace the other computer name with your own. If you get four replies, then things are looking really good. If you don’t, then again we have issues.
Now, if you are still having issues, something may be filtering the ports needed to do networking. I’ve seen this on computers, even if Norton Internet Security is turned off or uninstalled incorrectly. The same with Mcafee’s product. Go to each computer and type this in the black box. “netstat -an.” This will show you the active and listening ports on your computers. You should see ports 135, 139, and 445 on the left hand side as listening or waiting. If you don’t, then they are being blocked by something. That is usually a firewall. Sometimes you have to uninstall those products to get it working.
If you’re still having issues, throw me an email. I’m more than happy to help!
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