I am attempting to setup a wireless home network using 2 Win XP Home (SP2) laptops and a Belkin wireless router.
PC1 is known as MGRLap1 and has an IP address of 192.168.2.2, it also has a printer attached to it.
PC2 is known as PCBLap1 and has an IP address of 192.168.2.4
The router has an IP address of 192.168.2.1
The PC’s belong to workgroup MRHOME.
My problem is that i can view the shared folders on both laptops and use PC1’s printer without any problems if i enter the IP address in windows explorers address bar but when trying to use the PC’s name i.e. MGRLap1 i cannot do so unless i add it the ‘hosts’ file under c:\windows\system32\etc\hosts. I have set up the router to have its ‘DHCP Server’ function enabled. I am under the assumption that this means that i could have a different ipaddress for each laptop each time it connects and thus using the hosts file is not advised as it should only be used for static IP addresses. if this assumption is correct how do i access each laptop using it’s computer name, is this achievable using a wireless DHCP home network?
In addition, using the netview command with the computer name returns:
C:\Documents and Settings\Michael(Jnr)>net view \\PCBLap1
System error 53 has occurred.
The network path was not found.
although with the ipaddress it returns:
C:\Documents and Settings\Michael(Jnr)>net view \\192.168.2.4
Shared resources at \\192.168.2.4
Pauls New Toy
Share name Type Used as Comment
————————————————————————–
Documents Disk
MR Shared on PCBLap1 Disk
Printer Print EPSON Stylus Photo R200 Series
Printer2 Print Epson Stylus COLOR 640 ESC/P 2
The command completed successfully.
I have searched a multitude of sites and am still puzzled as to how to fix this. I welcome any help!
cheers
Mick