Member Avatar for davidjcolbran

Hello

Hope someone can help - I'm new here and having some difficulties with my home network.

I have two PCs and want to link them, so both can access an external hard-drive to share music files etc.

Machine 1 - Dell Desktop PC, running Windows XP Home Ver 2002 SP3, Norton Internet Security, connects via a USB connection to a Western Digital My Book external hard-drive, connects to the internet via a Cat5 ethernet cable to my router.

Machine 2 - Toshiba Tecra Laptop, running Windows XP Pro Ver 2002 SP3, AVG & MS Firewall, connects to the internet via a wireless connection to my router.

Router is a Belkin F5D9630-4 modem / router combo and connects to a ADSL line.

........................

Both PCs connect to the internet no problem. I've tried to create a home network via the Wizard in 'Network Tasks' both with the options 'Set up a home or small office network' and the 'Set up a Wireless Network for a home or small office' and neither seems to work.

They create a workgroup of the same name on both machines, but neither can 'see' the other machine and the subsequent 'shares'. I am looking at these via Explorer - Tools / Map Netork Drive / Browse

I understand how to share folders and files and have done this with the external HD that connects via USB to Machine 1.

But don't really know what to try next - probably very straight forward !

Thanks for reading and if you can help.

David

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by Joe Mama
Member Avatar for davidjcolbran

Managed to figure it out myself. Neither machines could 'Ping' each other - so something stopping them. Checked into the Firewalls and this looked like favourite. Turned them off for 5 minutes - both now could ping each other, I could 'see' each machine on the other and the shares worked. A quick tweak on both Firewalls and it's working!

Member Avatar for shivraj1432

check ur computer name of both

Member Avatar for Joe Mama

That was going to be my next suggestion - check the FW settings ESPECIALLY on Norton Internet Security. I have seen this app block things that are normally not supposed to be blocked. Im sure you made the exception in your tables to allow your 192.168.x.x/24 range as trusted within both of your firewalls.

At any rate, good on you for figuring this out!
-Me

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