I have a small home network, consisting of a workgroup with two laptops, two desktops, and a networked Western Digital disk. One of the desktops provides shared printers, the other has some old apps running that haven’t been moved elsewhere.
Internet access is through my cable company, with a router that provides DHCP services. Everything uses a dynamic IP address, except for the WD disk, which has a static address.
Access to the network is both wired and wireless. The two laptops can have both wired and wireless access. Wireless access is though a WAP separate from the cable company’s router.
The laptops are running XP SP3 and the desktops are SP2.
This network has been working for about a year and a half without any problems. Then, one of the laptops died and I had to do a rebuild.
The connectivity issues may have started during this rebuild, but I can’t say for certain. I had some printing issues during the rebuild, but first thought they were driver related.
After the rebuild was complete, and the printer problems persisted, I started looking at the connectivity.
What I first found was that all machines could see every other pc in the workgroup display. However, the printer sharing pc could not be accessed. Using the ping command, all pcs can reach all other devices, except for the printer pc. However, the printer pc can sucessfully ping everything. Internet access works for all machines.
I turned off all firewalls (I’m using the one in windows), which didn’t help. Now, I cannot start the firewall on the printer pc. The windows firewall and ICS service is stopped and cannot be started. I get an “error 193: 0CX1” message when I try. I’ve researched this message, but haven’t found anything that works.
I can’t find anything wrong with the settings on the printer pc. Nothing was changed here anyway until I turned off the firewall, which was after the problem started. I was beginning to suspect a network adapter hardware issue, so I loaded the latest driver for it (Broadcomm) but that didn’t help. I have a spare n/a card, so I was beginning to think about swapping it in.
But now, the situation has changed again: I have lost all connectivity within the workgroup. No pc can see any other pc. However, the pings are still the same, with the printer pc able to ping everyone, and everyone else unable to ping it. Internet access continues to be okay.
I would appreciate any suggestions or advice.