Home networking problems

[BlueMonkey]

I'm having great difficulty in getting my home LAN working after I've had broadband installed, and am looking for some help.

I have both machines automatically assigning an IP address, as the the broadband connection (although I have tried specifying addresses to both machines without success). DNS is also set to automatically be determined.

The workgroup is connected via a hub. If I PING one of the machines, I get a reply, but when I type "\\sue\desktop" I get a not found error.

I've tried disabling to broadband device without success.

Is there any other information needed to help solve the problem?

Your help is really appreciated - this is driving me crazy!


B.M.

 

[dentarthurdent]

Broadband connection is irrelevant. You need some form of lan name resolution.
You say when you ping you get a reply so there is no physical or logical reason why you can't connect to the other PC. It's just that when you type '\\sue\desktop' your PC doesn't know how to translate 'sue' into an IP address.
There are many ways to fix this. You could specify the IP address explicitly ie. \\x.x.x.x\desktop. (Make sure you have a shared folder called desktop on sue!)
You could add an entry to the LMHOSTS file on both PC's but that would be a problem as you have dynamic addressing which will constantly change.
You should probably enable 'Netbios over IP' in your network settings - this alone might allow 'sue' to be found. The problem with this is that you should be well firewalled if you have a broadband connection to the net. Most software firewalls don't allow netbios traffic by default.
WINS, DNS and active directory can also be used for internal name resolution but they are not for home use.
One other point - make sure you give user permissions to allow the sharing of files between 2 PC's.

 

[BlueMonkey]

I'll try typing the IP address explicity - there is definetely a desktop share.

Where do I enable Netbios over IP.

I have a firewall for the broadband connection, but I'll try disabling it.

B.M.

 

[dentarthurdent]

To change netbios settings in Windows 2000:

Right click 'My Network Places'choose properties.
Right click 'Local area connection' choose properties.
Highlight TCP/IP and choose properties.
Click advanced button.
Select WINS tab.
At bottom of page there are settings for NetBios.

Cheers,
Will.

 

[BlueMonkey]

OK, cheers I'll try tonight when I get home.

B.M.

 

[Smallboy3uk]

why not do it the easy way, on the machine with the broadband connection enable ICS for that connection, this invokes the host machine as a mini dhcp server then set the other machine to auto ip.



Regards

Si.

Win2k MCP

 

[BlueMonkey]

I was under the impression taht I would need the LAN connected before enabling ICS - is this not the case?

Incidentially, I'm not doing this for ICS to work - I want to share files/printers etc

B.M.

 

[Smallboy3uk]

yes you need the lan connected but you cant use the broadband connection as a dhcp server which is what you seem to imply.

if you enable ics you get your own dhcp server for your lan, though the host machine will have a static ip address, and if you have file and printer sharing enabled you will have a functional lan.

hope that is a bit clearer.



Regards

Si.

Win2k MCP