Connecting an XP Pro computer to Win2000 laptop
 

Trying to connect my laptop (Win2K) to my desktop (XP Pro) works from laptop to desktop but rearwards compatibility seems to have been overlooked if you are trying to connect an XP Pro computer to a Win2K machine. The XP Pro computer just will not recognise any lesser OS'd Win2K machines across our Windows network. The connection is via router hubs and a server running Mandrake, RedHat or Gentoo flavours of Linux.

I suspect that it was done intentionally by Msoft in order to discourage non or partial upgrade from Win2K platforms. XP Pro is supposedly OKAY visible from/to any other brand of Windoze - but requiring a specially made up floppy to innoculate any machine you wish to share with or connect to.

However someone out there might have some clues (or specific URLS). Cannot find reference to it in the usual places.

Not sure if it'll help in this instance, but some very useful networking stuff can be found here: World of Windows Networking

Nb. I swear by that site - it's both brilliant and free !

I've covered something like this before here but can't remember where! The problem is nearly always with the "receiving" PC.

In the Win2K default set-up, "Guest Accounts" are disabled.

On the Win2K machine, go to Control Panel/Administrative Tools/Computer Management/System Tools/Local Users & Groups/Users. In the right-hand window, right click Guest and left click "Properties".

There's a box there for you to enable/disable Guest.

Fix that and it should let your XP machine in.

I'm running my laptop WinME, Server XP, and Game machine on 2000, all talk to each other quite nicely now, all sharing the internet

however had problems like what you are discussing.

Try running the network setup again on the xp, it will then hopefully re-discover the win2k.

Dont forget to share the drives.

I found 2000 initially made it hard to share the drives, found something funny about the c: drive on 2k not wanting to share, but ended up changing the share name somehow, and that fixed it.

Thanks all.
Tried all that and many reboots later I am still unable to map a drive or browse either way now.

On the laptop I can read the XP's computer name and comment. However, even though the drives are shared there's no access. Very mystifying and time-wasting.

BELLCHEEK

Just a couple of thoughts.......

Can you give us an idea of what network protocols you're using? As you probably know, MS has decided not to automatically install NetBEUI with XP, although it's still available on the installation CDROM if you look carefully. They want you to use TCP/IP (which is definitely better for all of us!!).

What IP addresses are you using? Can you ping the other machines from the command prompt? And can they ping you?

EDITED to say that if you're using TCP/IP only, and the laptop can read the XP identifier then you're probably OK, and will ping fine.

Have you disabled the inbuilt firewall though?

Cheers

Another Success for the Pprune Computer & Internet Forum
 

Envirascape, Fobotsco and General Electric

Sirs,
I reviewed the Services Event log for the period around about when I'd implemented the fobotsco advice and noted therefafter many errors related to DNS and the card configuration (being inexplicably changing its IP address at random). I assumed a TCP/IP corruption/crash, deleted the NIC card in Hardware and it reloaded on re-boot and hey presto, all was OKAY with the network.

The esoteric nature of the MS product and its error messages never fails to amaze me. Thanks for your excellent advices. My lesson learnt is that no matter what you do, the second to last ditch measure is delete devices and let Windows sort itself out. I re-learnt that same lesson with my SCSI scanner's TWAIN driver and SCSI card. The scanner wouldn't operate off the install program but once I killed the SCSI card and rebooted, all came good.

If airplanes treated me like this, I'd ground myself.

BellCheek

Bravo mon vieux!

Wasn't it ever thus? I've just had roughly the same problem with some third-party software; every time I tried to load the Nero CD burner my Win2K PC rebooted! So I uninstalled the last application I had installed from Sitecom (bad earlier experiences with them) and, as you say. hey presto!

We all learn from these exchanges but I can't figure why the event viewer would show DNS errors after you fiddled with the guest account. But who cares as long as it works?