Win2K direct cable connection problems

Hi all, I know this is a fairly common topic but I have tried everything I can find with no luck.

I have an old Thinkpad and a new desktop PC, both now running Windows 2000 Professional.

Using a laplink parallel cable I have been able to establish a 4Mbps 'unauthenticated user' connection, but I am not able to access either machine via this connection.

I have selected the c drives and individual folders to share, I have tried disabling TCP/IP in favour of NetBEUI, I have tried mapping drives in My Computer but all to no avail (I can't browse for the other machine either way).

Neither of the 'entire network' or 'computers near me' folders show the other machine, and a network search returns no results.

The 'sent' and 'received' figures match perfectly so there is definitely some form of communication, which I assume means that my laplink cable is OK.

The only thing I haven't tried is messing about with IP addresses - I don't know how to do this or what numbers to use so I'm trusting Windows to have set suitable addresses automatically at this stage. The main PC has internet access, I don't want to ***** that up. I don't need (or want) internet access for the laptop (I don't want to have to load a firewall onto the laptop, I just want to download safe files from the PC, work on them, and then upload to the PC later).

If anyone is able to help me out I'd be grateful - I don't know what I'm doing wrong!!!

 

You can't have an unauthenticated user on a Windows 2000 machine. You have to logon. Create user (at whatever access level you require) accounts on the machines. Create an account on machine A with the same username and password as that of the user coming in from machine B. And vice versa.

Aside from that, can you even ping between the machines?

 

Thanks Kevin, I just discovered yesterday that if I log on as administrator on both machines I can search for the other computer by name in 'my network places'. Although it does not show up in that window or the 'computers near me' window, it will respond to a search.

The link is still an 'unauthenticated user' one - I do not need to enter a password when I connect to the PC from the laptop. I don't totally understand what is going on, and I haven't been able to get the other machine to show up in any 'network' windows, but I have been able to create shortcuts to each machine on the desktops which suits me fine.

I'll post another thread to see if anyone can give me a good reason why I shouldn't log on as administrator every time, but thanks for your help.

Cheers,

WG