Other computer on LAN not accessible

The setting is on the advanced tab in the User GUI (from control panel). See attached.

 

Sorry Jim,

I hit the wrong button and over wrote your message rather than replying to it. See below.

Reggie

 

Ah! The option you want is "Change the way users log on and off ".

Unfortunately, I am coming to the conclusion that you are right - this is another symptom of your registery being corrupted. It looks like it preventing the correct permissions being asigned.

Newt's disappeared. We think he is well, but not posting any more. So you're stuck with me and the rest of the happy band who hang around the Network forum.

 

Reggie ...

Apologies for not responding sooner to your last post but, for reasons unknown, I wasn't notified of it.

That doesn't help ... I still have no access to the User Accounts sheet shown in the screenshot in your post #21.

Re Newt: his last post, on 28 Dec, stated, in part:

"I'm busy as a one armed paper hanger right now and will be mostly off the forum. Best guess is another week or two. "​

I guess the "week or two" has stretched to a "month or five ". Meanwhile, it's not so bad being stuck with you and the rest of the "happy band ".

 

JSS3rd,

Have you tried temporarily shutting down Zonealarm on both computers and see if it works?

 

That was the very first thing I tried. Whether ZA is on or off, on either or both computers, I can access the desktop's folders/files from the laptop, but not vice versa.

 

Have you checked the node type on the laptop ? ? ? (ipconfig /all)

If it is Peer-Peer, check out this article and see if it helps;

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/903267

Let us know if it works or not.

 

Node type is "Unknown" on both computers, and neither computer has the Registry subkeys mentioned in the MSKB atricle. I'll play with some settings a bit and report back.

 

Hi Jim,

Node type unknown! interesting. Are you using static configuration or getting IP addresses from your router (lost track - this has been a long thread!)

Reggie

 

Hi Reggie,

I use static IP addresses because of my ZoneAlarm firewall. Otherwise, I'd have to look to see what my IP was and change ZoneAlarm's settings every time I wanted to connect one computer to the other.

Also, I use my laptop to connect to another network of two computers, and the laptop from the other network also connects to my network occasionally. Because both laptops can connect by either wireless or ethernet, and both networks use ZA, static IPs make everything much simpler.

Still no luck getting my desktop to transfer files to/from the laptop, but as long as I can do it from the laptop, I really don't have a major problem. As I've mentioned before, I'm about convinced it's a Registry problem so, one of these days when I have nothing else to do, I'll reformat and reinstall XP Pro.

 

Thanks Jim,

In part my request was following up on the idea that the node type setting is significant. It is an interesting idea. As my XP computers use a Win 2003 DHCP server that defines a node type, I was interested to find out when the node type is set as Unknown.

 

Reggie ...

Well, it took over a year )), but I just found the solution to my problem a few minutes ago. Since you tried so hard to help me last year, it's only fair that you be the first to know the answer.

So you don't have to read through the whole thread to recall my problem and your suggestions (none of which worked, unfortunately ), it was simply that I was unable to access my laptop computer from my desktop computer on my LAN. Whenever I tried to do so, I got the message seen in the screenshot. My ZoneAlarm firewall had nothing to do with it, and sharing and security settings were as they should be. I could access the desktop from the laptop, however, and transfer files in both directions.

For a year I limped along, not able to access the laptop computer from the desktop but, a few weeks ago, even that capability went belly-up, and I had to resort to transferring files using a USB flashdrive.

Over this past weekend, I re-installed XP Pro on both computers, sure that doing so would take care of the problem, but it only compounded it ... the computers could see each other, but couldn't communicate. It was only when I got around to configuring Group Policies that the lightbulb came on over my head.

Because I'm the only user of my computers, I've never used a logon password. In Group Policies > Computer Configuration > Windows Settings >Security Settings > Local Policies > Security Options I found that Accounts: Limit local account use of blank passwords to console logon only was enabled on both computers. As soon as I disabled the setting, voilà! Each computer can now access the other and transfer files in either direction. Just thought you'd like to know.

 

Jim,

Thank you for posting that information. I've not hit that problem before : I expect because I avoid blank passwords. I wonder if this is the cause of a number of issues seen by posters. I'll definitely add it to the list of settings to check.

Of course, the easy solution is always to use passwords!

 

Reggie ...

Perhaps I should add that the same setting is also accessible from Security Policies > Local Policies > Security Options.

I spoke too soon about everything being completely back to normal, though, as now I have something even weirder going on. On the laptop I can copy or move files in either direction between the computers, which is as it should be.

On the desktop, however, I can copy or move files only from the laptop to the desktop. When I try to copy or move files from the desktop to the laptop, I get the error message shown in the screenshot. Again, sharing and security settings, including permissions, are correct ... in fact, they're the same on both computers, as are the Group and Security Policy settings.

Any thoughts?

 

Jim,

Have you tried using a password? Network system expect you to use a password. Even if you are not convinced by the security argument, the pragmatic argument is perhaps more compelling : networking works more reliably if you use a password. Even a one letter password is better than no password.

I think there are two issues here. One the fact that it is deemed as good practice to use a password and therefore systems are designed to work with them and even (as you have found) not to work without them.

The second issue that I think also occurs is that systems gets confused with whether your password is nil or a blank string (" "). The two can look the same, but for a computer the two are completely different. Therefore, you can get strange behaviour when one system thinks your password is " " and another thinks it is nil. Using a password overcomes this problem because it defines your password uniquely.

If you want an easy life - use a password!!!!

 

Reggie ...

I started this thread more than two years ago, and my last post to it was ten months ago, but I have some new information for you.

At some point since my last post I became completely unable to transfer files in either direction from either computer, despite the fact that the two computers could see each other in Windows Explorer. Instead, when I tried to access a file or folder on one computer from the other, I would get the error message seen in the attached screenshot. (I never did establish a password on my system, despite your suggestion, as it seemed to be more trouble than it was worth. )

Sharing and permissions were set properly, but the second paragraph, "Not enough server storage is available to process this command ", made no sense to me. So, I plodded along, transferring files by external means, either with a flashdrive or with an external hard drive.

As you probably know, Arie lists several recent BBS postings that he thinks will be of interest to readers in each of his newsletters. In the most recent newsletter, he included this thread, "Visibilty of other network computer depends if I'm wired or wireless ", to which you contributed. Reading through it, I saw a program called Network Magic mentioned, so I checked it out, installing it on each computer.

As it turned out, the program didn't do a thing for me, so I uninstalled it, but I found information in the support section of the Network Magic website that was right on point. This post in their forums details exactly how to modify the Registry to solve the "not enough server storage" problem. As it happens, I didn't even have entries for IRPStackSize, so had to create them. After rebooting my computers, all is well ... the two computers not only see each other, they now "talk" to each other.

Just thought you might like to add this bit of information to your bag of networking tricks. Thanks for all your help.