WIN XP - home lan setup help req

[d00m_uk]

I have WinXP pro.

2 PC's with on board Lan and a cross over cable.

I have tried everything to get these to work on a lan and cant figure it out.
either 1 can see the other but cant actually gain access to it or they just dont see each other.

I have used a few guides but im still struggling like mad.

I have sharing enabled on the c drives of both pc's but it still dosnt work.

PPPLLLEEEAASSE HELP as ive bought a new pc just for this purpose and now cant figure it out.

Thanx in advance

[johnnyis42]

quick run through check to see if everything is ready:

1. look at both network cards in the device manager, under their properties sheet see if the "power management" tab hass all options unchecked. for some reason this will occasionally make the devices not see eachother.

2. make sure the windows firewall is turned off on all network, internet, and dial up connections. if it is on for one, it is on for all and sometimes it gives major trouble to setting up a home LAN.

3. when connecting 2 pc's between a crossover cable, make sure you are using a static ip address for each card, and it is reccomended you use a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0 . this just makes thing easier to deal with and one less thing to wonder about.

4. share out a folder on each computer. if you haven't done this already, windows will ask you about what you want to do when you go to the sharing tab in the folder's properties sheet. tell it you just want to enable file sharing, that you DO NOT want to run the networking wizard. also, make sure in folder properties in windows explorer you have "simple file sharing" eanabled att he bottom of the options list.

5. make sure all other firewalls are disabled, and no other programs are trying to access network resoures. all of these suggestions are temporary just to get the 2 computers to see eachother on the simple network and isolate the situation down to the bare essentials. any other security settings you have in place can be re-implimented one by one after everything is working, and then you will know what is the culprate causing your issue.

6. finally, try pinging eachother or using UNC namming to resolve the other computer in windows explorer/internet explorer. UNC is when you use either the other computer's ip addrss or computer name prefixed by \\. for example :

\\computer1
\\10.10.10.5

if the other computer on your network has the computer name "computer1" or the ip address "10.10.10.5", putting either of those 2 things in the address bar of internet explorer or windows explorer will bring up the computer's shared resources (the shared folder, or printer) sometimes the browser service doesn't kick right in on a network that doesn't have a standing WINS server or DHCP, and it takes some time for all the network identifying functions to kick in. using this method to ping or force the computer to show its resources will kick in the browser service faster than lietting it sit for a few minutes.

hope this helps!

[d00m_uk]

thanks for replying, alas non of this made any difference.

PC1 can see PC1 & pc2
pc2 cannot even see the workgroup??

sometimes the situation is reveresed.

They can both ping themselves but not the other pc.

I have tried several different corrover cables and it makes no difference.
I have manually setup the network and used the 'setup small home or office network ' option provided by win xp.

It still wont work - i get the same result no matter what.

ANy other ideas?

I only actually want to share my internet connection and dont want to have to spend money on a router when the equipment i have should work correctley.

Any more ideas would be of great help.

Thanks in advance.

[johnnyis42]

well, if neither pc can ping the other and there is no firewall present on either machine, then there is a problem somewhere. either a serious misconfigration (disabled service, broken TCP/IP, incorect drivers for the network card, driver misconfiguration for the network card) or one of the network cards is bad.

check and doublecheck all your settings, and make sure all your services are at their default settings. not being able to ping either computer from the other is the problem you should fix first, because the is your simple connectivity. once you get that working, you can start getting the other network services to work.

out of curiosity, what are the ip addresses you're using for both the machines?

[d00m_uk]

ip address on pc1 is:-

192.168.0.1
subnet 255.255.255.0

pc2:-

192.168.0.161
subnet 255.255.255.0

i have double checked and triple check both drivers(there both
on-board lan)

the one which can see the other often changes.
everything is set to default, i have delter all the config and re-installed a million times and it alsways ends the same.

Im really stuck - ive spent 3 days trying to sort it but just cant see whats wrong.

any ideas?

[johnnyis42]

this is a silly question, but have you checked that the link lights are showing up on each network card?

[d00m_uk]

ther are both on-board SIS 900 based pci fast ethernet adapters.

as they are both on-board there are no link lights.

however if i unplug the cable from 1 pc the other says 'a cable has been unplugged' so it certinly detects something.

[johnnyis42]

well, if it is detecting a connection but there are no link lights, there may be problems with the cables.

check each end of the cable to verify that the orange and green wires are NOT in the same place on both of the cables. if both ends are identical, then it will not work.

[d00m_uk]

the colours are in different places.
I have also changed the cables and it still didnt work.
There are no link lights because they are on-board cards- its not that the lights dont light up there are none at all - no bulbs - no lights - none at all.
It is not that they are there but not lit up - there simply arnt any on the cards.

I know it sounds like am being arkward but really - i AM trying everything suggested - alas all to no avail.

[johnnyis42]

that's kinda wierd because even onboard cards usually put a couple LED's int here for tx rx. oh well.

when you plug in the cables and the "link disconnected" icon in the windows sys trray goes away, does it show any activity in the network status window under network connections?