Accessing XP from Windows 98

[rianeiromiron]

As many of us have encountered it sometimes becomes difficult to access XP resources from a Windows 98 machine on the network. Many questions and answers have been posted on this and many other forums, regarding the "\\Computer\IPC$" password dilema. Well, at work, finally we came out with the easiest solution.

On the XP machine, go to My Network Places (I have the spanish version, so I'll translate). Click on left's panel "Configure a home or small office network". Follow the wizard and create the network configuration floppy as indicated by the wizard. After finishing the configuration, take the floppy, run to the win98 machine (je je, the running part is optional, I did it cause I couldn't wait), insert on floppy drive and run the program saved on the diskette by the XP wizard. Follow instructions and.... voilá, now you can access the XP machine

Hope this helps to all of us ITs.

 

[pmonett]

Sorry to have to say, but the wizard does not always solve the problem.

I have encountered a case where a friend of mine added a new PC (under XP) to his computing parc. Got him a hub, and linked his old PC (under 98SE) and the new together.
The first thing I did was run the wizard, fully expecting to be able to have a network after reboot. Well, no network.
I'll spare the details, but it took two nights of work (meaning about four hours), involving a lot of rebooting, pinging and removing network hardware, before we finally, all of a sudden, got connectivity both ways.
And the worst thing is : I cannot remember exactly what I did in the end to get it working. Maybe it was just a fluke.

In any case, I can most definitely say that the wizard is not always enough.

Pascal.

 

[wolluf]

It should be easy.

If simplified sharing is not enabled on XP machine, needs to be account on XP machine matching the 98 logon (don't use null passwords).

If simplified sharing is enabled, it should just work.

This of course overlooks the fact that 98 networking is not the most robust - and in fact my favourite troubleshooting technique is to just remove and reinstall networking on 98 machines having network problems (but if they're getting password prompt - its the non-simplified sharing scenario).