Now you see it...

[jimtherev]

...or to be more accurate, 'now you don't see it, now you do... about 15 mins later.' I'm talking about my home network.

Scenario: my computer, my wife's computer and a printer connected by a wired lan via a router.

I can print from my m/c; 'erindoors can print from her m/c.
File & printer sharing enabled on both computers, but most times when she switches on I can't see her m/c on the network... to transfer files etc - neither can she see me.

So, look at Netgear's diags 'what's connected?' page: yes, both machines are there; so is the printer. No surprise there, we can both print.

Wait a bit, and, hey presto, there she is. As I've said, this could be 15 or even 30 minutes later. Perfect communication in both directions.

I've now forgotten what I wanted to do in the first place, but that's another problem :bored:.

Any thoughts, clever chums, how to mitigate or preferably nuke this irritating delay?

Thanks, y'all.
Jim

[Saab Dastard]

Try searching google for "delay browsing windows network neighbourhood" or some such appropriate combination.

There's lots of possibilities, and you will be in pole position to experiment with the search results you obtain.

A few things that work well for me - fixed IP addresses, all in same workgroup, plus same user account names & passwords on each PC and direct drive mappings (including to admin$ shares).

SD

[Gertrude the Wombat]

Yeah, seen that, 15 minutes definitely rings a bell.

You don't give us much in the way of clues, such as the operating systems in use?

If it's an ill-assorted mixture of Windows versions one approach is to wait two or three minutes rather than 15, then on "hismachine" try to navigate to "hermachine" by typing "\\hermachine (file://\\hermachine)" in the Run dialog rather than trying to refresh "My Network Places". (If this works then you can of course set up a shortcut for next time.)

(On seriously old mixtures of versions of Windows - we're talking networks mixing WfW3.11 and NT3.5 here, that sort of thing - you have to fiddle around with settings for master browsers, but that was decades ago now.)

[Keef]

It can, and often does, take 15 minutes for my machines to decide they can see each other. I don't go that way.

What I've done with mine is to "map" network drives for the ones I want. They appear in Windoze Explorer, whether or not the other machine is connected. Open Explorer, click on the relevant drive letter, and there it is, instantly. If the other machine isn't there (silly Keef!), there's a pause followed by an error message.

Hence, drive "I" on the main machine appears as drive "I" on the laptop. The "backup" drive on the Linux machine (hdc6) is drive "B" on both desktop and laptop. The "book drive" up in the attic is drive "S" on both. All instantly accessible.

I can even access "B", "I" and "S" when I'm up in Norfolk using the laptop. A VPN is a simple thing to set up.

[jimtherev]

SD - I shall certainly try the Googling when I have a block of time. Trouble is that when doing this it's only too easy to find something interesting & gallop off and play - only to find one has wasted an hour and no further forward... anyone recognise that syndrome?

GtW - me: XP, 'erindoors W2k: much the same OS with goodies in the former, but, I know, they both have surprises. I suspect that if I were somehow to tweak the W2k registry I'd get instant connection - but I don't know enough.

Keef - d'y'know, I'd forgotten all about mapping drives; used to do that all the time on a bigger network. I'll give it a try.

The other thing that had me doing :ugh: is that (and I forgot to mention this in my OP) is that my laptop, (XP and wireless connection) detects my machine every time and instantly. So I'm sure that you're on the right track, GtW.

Thanks, y'all: I'll get back when I've tried Keef's solution.

Jim

[jimtherev]

Thanks again, Keef. Did the job a treat
Jim