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Problem with hardwired home network

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by ronn hanley

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I have two PC's hardwired together via thier NIC's using a cross over cable. I have configured XP according to the instructions on the MS site. The problem is: the primary computer (minotaur) can graphically see the remote computer (goku) An icon is displayed in Network neighborhood. However Goku cannot see Minotaur at all. The computers cannot ping each other. They also cannot Net View each other. But if I shut one off, the system reports that the a network cable is disconnected. There are good link lights between the PCs. I have shut off the firewall on the remote PC. Any ideas?

5 replies

by bcmathis

Its reporting the network cable is disconnected because the other NIC has no power so your computer cannot tell it is still connected. As far as the 2 seeing each other, i would check your IP settings making sure you are using the same IP Schema, subnet masks are the same and that there is no default gateway (but only if this is a dedicated crossover) and no DNS. Second i would go through the networking wizard again and setup both computers on the same workgroup. Let me know if this helped!

by sgt_shultz

with the firewalls (plural) off, they should be able to ping each other.
tell us more about the nics. can you try locking the media type on them both down to 10mb half duplex for a test?
perhaps you could also open a command prompt (Start/Run/cmd) and type ipconfig on each computer and post the results.
as mentioned, they need to be in same workgroup on same network segment (eg. 10.0.0.n) and using the same network mask (eg. 255.255.255.0)
and they need to have a network share available. also need a user account on each with same username and password

by hal 9000

It should be a simple thing of just running the Network Setup Wizard on each computer and you will at the very least have the Shared Documents Folder available on each machine.

Where you may be going wrong is if you are setting up the network to have one computer access the Internet and the other to access the Internet through the primary computer you need to tick or mark the circle that says something like this "This computer connects to the Internet through another computer or residential gateway" you'll also need to enable File & printer sharing or you will not be able to share files between the computers and one will always remain invisible to the other one.

Failing that you can always go into the Connections panel or Networking in the Control Panel and chose Repair Connection on the one computer that is not seeing the other one but I would be running the Network Setup Wizards first and making sure that both computers are not set to the same IP address or on different Subnets and Workgroup.

If that doesn't cure your problem you should check the cable and while not common it is not unknown for a cable to be faulty and they are a real time waster. Recently on one site I spent several hours trying to get one lead to work and finally I found a faulty plug where lead 1 wasn't making a connection. A new socket cured that problem but as they where all new and just fitted and out of the same batch it did leave me a bit concerned about just how reliable the rest of the sockets where going to be.

Col

by ronn hanley

The computer attached to the internet (Minotaur) has the following info:
Network side IP 192.168.0.1
Subnet 255.255.255.0

The remote (Goku) has the following
Network side IP 192.168.0.2
Subnet 255.255.255.0

A loop back test works fine on each individual PC. Minotaur has a Realtek RLT8139 PCI Family Fast Ethernet Adapter that is reporting a good 100Mbps connection.
Goku has a Linksys Fast Ethernet 10/100 NIC and it is also reporting a good 100Mbps connection.
Both PC's are running XP home with SP2. I have turned off Internet connection sharing because for the moment I am more concerned about getting the file sharing part down first. I ultimately intend to create a hot spot in my home and connect a total of 3 PC's and one laptop.

For some reason my CMD.exe is corrupted, I'll reinstall it and post a reponse to Ping and Net View.

Thanks for all of your help.

Ronn

by otl

I believe Hal hit the nail on the head as to share on XP you have to designate each directory or file to share, and usually provide a user name and password (or no password) to access the shared resource. What you log into the computer as also can be used to access the other computers resources, if you set up the network login correctly.

Took me several hours to share from XP to ME and I wound up going XP to ME to move files. This was an easier solution than the other way around.

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