Wireless woes!

[Spotting Bad Guys]

Hi everybody

I need some help - grateful for any advice.

I have a Linksys wireless-B router that is working well - my laptop connects to the network without any problems using the Linksys PCMCIA card.

I wanted to add a third PC to the network and picked up a D-Link wireless-G USB antenna (going cheap, I now understand why).

I have run the network set-up wizard and the 3rd PC connects without problem. I can access the internet and can see the two other computers but do not have permissions to access them or their drives. File sharing etc is all set correctly.

Help!

Regards

SBG

[carbheatcold]

Do you have a firewall installed on this computer? Is it the settings on this which are preventing the opening of access. I had a similar issue when I first setup my wireless network.

chc

[Spotting Bad Guys]

Each of the computers has the windows firewall activated - I tried Zone Alarm but had endless problems trying to configure it.

How can I tell the firewall that the computers on the LAN are OK?

Cheers

SBG

[Keef]

It depends very much on the specific software and drivers in the devices you are using.

Router firmware, your firewall (Zone Alarm), file sharing, and so on can all play a part.

What I'd do is to copy down all the settings in the machine that works OK, and then see if you can duplicate them in the other one. You may find that your USB wireless device doesn't have the sophistication needed. A PCI WiFi card might be a cheaper and more effective solution if there's an available PCI slot.

I've got several machines networked and sharing files quite happily, using PCMCIA and PCI cards.

[Conan the Librarian]

This really hacked me off when I tried to do it and am still not entirely happy, but file sharing is ine thing - if you find the security settings as well, then that might help. Sorry if this is cryptic, but I can't go there now as lots of (I wish they were fun) things are grabbing me as I type.

Conan

[Spotting Bad Guys]

Good replies so far. I can discount incompatibility of the USB wireless as it was woking until I had to re-format/reinstall the 3rd PC. All drivers are properly installed and file sharing is set on all the computers.

I removed Zone Alarm ages ago as I could not configure it to allow the computers to share data - now just using the Windows firewall.

Any further thoughts?

SBG

[Onan the Clumsy]

now just using the Windows firewall.

That's what I thought too, then I discovered McAfee had one up also.

Similar thread running here

[flybhx]

Does the linksys have a hardware firewall. If it does then disable the windows firewall. Having multiple firewalls active causes all sorts of strange activity.