This could be of particular interest to Tonic Please and 5milesbaby
We were discussing a problem where having set up a home network, tried all the filesharing arrangements, turned off all firewalls and run all the wizards. One computer could be seen by the other but not vise versa.
Well with the utmost thanks to this web site
http://www.michna.com/kb/wxnet.htm
And in particular this Item
The RestrictAnonymous registry value
You have both the following symptoms:
• You can ping the computer by IP and by name.
• When you type on another computer, replacing computername with the name of the inaccessible computer:
net view \\computername
you get one of the various "Error 5" error messages, like "System error 5 has occurred. Access is denied" or "Error 5: You do not currently have access to this file. ..."
This is in some cases caused by a registry setting named RestrictAnonymous. Go to the computer which you cannot access, start a registry editor and change the following registry value.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
\SYSTEM
\CurrentControlSet
\Control
\Lsa
Value name: RestrictAnonymous
Value type: DWORD
If the value is 1 or even 2, change it to 0, reboot and retest. If the problem is solved, leave the value at zero. If not, you can change it back if you like.
Check immediately afterwards and again after a reboot, whether the value changes back to non-zero on its own. If that happens, then you have to find the culprit, which can be spyware, a worm, or a badly designed security program. You can try to disable programs and services and retry until you find out which one is responsible. One known Trojan that changes this value (and also some network access policies) calls itself mcafee32.exe, trying to pose as the antivirus program of that name.
Background: RestrictAnonymous controls whether null sessions, sessions that work without any authentication and use the permissions of the groups Everyone and NETWORK, are allowed (value 0) or disallowed (value 1). The value 2 is obsolete for Windows XP.
Don't mistake this for the value named restrictanonymoussam, which controls null session SAM account name listings.
My network now works as it should.
I hope this is of help to all those others who are rapidly going bald trying to get round this problem.
