network shares mixed network xp/vista/mac

[yahoo]

hey guys, its been a while so bear with me, I've been tearing my hair out over this one. Basically I've got a vista home prem box which has several shared folders. All the settings are right in sharing, same workgroup, sharing enabled, shares have 'everyone' read permission. for some reason, straight after a format every pc (xp/vista.. doesnt matter) on the network can access the shares, then it degrades into having to directly type the link to the share into the address bar i.e. \\vistabox\share or the other pc receives an access denied dialogue box. Now its impossible to connect in any way (except from my mac? wtf?). I have enabled logging in windows firewall but it doesnt log any denys, only allows so i doubt its that. could it be avast? are there any known issues with nvidia nforce (up to date) drivers?

any suggestions please!

 

[BadBigBen]

nVidia NICs are a known problem, they contain an inbuild firewall, which can cause problems with VISTA...

see:
thread1583-1437402

where I had similar problems...

Ben

"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."

 

[yahoo]

okay, ive tried adding another nic and using that. still seems to be the same. anyone?

 

[linney]

Are all the settings in the Network and Sharing Center correct?

File and Printer Sharing in Windows Vista

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb727037.aspx

Windows Vista: Networking

http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/Windows/en-US/networking.mspx

Have you tried the Diagnose and Repair options available by right-clicking on the Network icon in the Notification Area?


310560 - How to Troubleshoot By Using the Msconfig Utility in Windows XP

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;310560&FR=1&PA=1&SD=HSCH

 

[chiph]

I've noticed that my Mac can occasionally require a case-sensitive domain/workgroup name. Can you verify that what you're entering is 100% identical?

Chip H.



____________________________________________________________________
www.chipholland.com

 

[smah]

then it degrades into having to directly type the link to the share into the address bar i.e. \\vistabox\share or the other pc receives an access denied dialogue box. Now its impossible to connect in any way (except from my mac? wtf?).

This sounds like a netbios name resoltion problem or master browser problem, potentially with firewall trouble thrown in. How many machines are on the network, how are they connected, and how do they get their IP address & name resoltion information?

Step 1 is to turn off firewalls an analize which machines can ping other machines - both by name & IP address.

 

[yahoo]

@chiph: my mac is the only one that can connect, vista-mac (and visa-versa) is perfect, unlike windows-windows.

@Smah: the only firewalls enabled are windows firewalls, surely that cant get in the way of networking? All pcs recieve their ip addresses via dhcp from a netgear router/switch.

i can ping the vista pc from all the others, doesnt seem to be a problem there. currently i can access the shares from other pcs by directly typing \\vistapc\share but not by browsing the entire pc @ \\vistapc. its confusing as it says the other computers dont have permission, but they have permission to access the shares themselves. weird.

 

[smah]

From a command prompt, run the following on each [windows] machine and compare the results:
nbtstat -r -n
nbtstat -a real-computername

Try forcing netbios name resolution over TCP/IP on the XP pcs

http://www.homenethelp.com/web/howto/net-xp-ics.asp

(ignore the rest of that article, it's about ICS)

 

[smah]

Back to the earlier question (an my suspicion where the problem lies) - how many xp systems are on this network? I suspect that one of them is the root problem. If you have multiple xp pc's, systematically only have 1 xp pc on at a time to see if you can isolate the problem with 1 particular xp pc.