i am running a pc (vista basic) and a laptop (xp pro-sp1) on a virgin cable modem through a belkin wireless router. The pc has an ethernet connection, the laptop a wireless network card. I had no problems accessing the laptops sharing folders from the pc until recently when my laptops network location mysteriously disappeared. After lots of googling, experimenting and looking for help I got my network back on-line, I don't know how, blind luck! OK for a day or two but now when I click the laptops location in the pc's "network" folder I get an error message saying maybe I don't have permission to use this resource ask the network administrator. I have zonealarm running on the pc and I had set up static ip addresses for both for using P2P but have went back to dynamic to see if this was interfering any. any help or some sort of troubleshooting checklist would be appreciated I have been trawling the net for days about this, loads of info about networking but not much about the problem at hand. Have tried restoring factory settings on the router but no difference i can see. Both of the computers ip addresses are on the routers settings webpage so that makes me think its a windows problem but what do I know. edit : i have tried naming them in the same workgroup but it made no difference. Really pullin my hair out here as i thought file sharing through my router was straightforward so obv its something i've or some1 else using the comp has done. i now can access the pc public folders from the laptop by veiwing workgroup computers now that i have turned off zonealarm so i think that was part of the problem but i cant seem to do it from pc to laptop. And the laptop does not appear on the network of the pc. HELP PLEASE !
Have you gone to the Vista network and sharing center you may need to check some boxes to allow varios options.
yes m8 i tried that, i tested all the settings in the network and sharing centre changing one at a time to see if it made any difference but no joy. when windows firewall isn't on the options about file sharing are greyed out so i tried it with windows firewall on and off. no difference. as i said before i can now access the vista public folders from the laptop when i turn off zonealarm on the pc(this is via the workgroup, but i was getting access straight from my wireless routers network before the problems), but no matter what i do now i can't get the laptop to show in my network folder on the pc, sometimes my routers icon is in there as well as the pc's own icon, sometimes not. thanks for the help anyway brother it's appreciated.
maybe there is a conflict between zonealarm and vista firewall only one of those two should be active if your using Vista you don't need zonealarm as the vista firewall is very good it's all I use. I would also ask if you have installed the latest drivers for your system along with Vista sp2 in the service pack there are some major enhancements to networking & wireless. I realize you have already reset your network but you just may want to try doing that again after installing XP sp3 I know that a potential problem may exist as your OS software is not up to date perhaps causing the issue. On another note when I view my network areas I too see my linksys router, on that router I have rosewill, netgear, and some super generic $9 usb wireless adapter all of them work well and I have all sharing enabled as we use one printer for all and often view videos in the bedroom that are stored in the living room we have two desktops two htpc's and one laptop now all of them are Vista but one used to be the xp pc and was originally used as the master server. I have googled, and binged your issue can't really find much but did read something about zonealarm with networking.
thats the way i was thinking, i uninstalled zonealarm yesterday after a fair bit of reading on the net which told me vista firewall does all the basics well. ZA also stops apps on your computer from accessing the internet, well asks permission to access anyway. Seems like its not worth the extra bother it causes with many apps as i've had probs with uTorrent before and it was ZA that was the cause. BTW i was only using ZA, i had vistas firewall off when this started, i know this because the file sharing icons in the network and sharing centre were greyed out when i first checked them. i am getting access to the network through the workgroup at the moment so i suppose this will have to do (for now!), i found i had the internet connection firewall activated in the advanced tab of the wireless connection properties and that was causing the prob with the workgroup set up but i still can't work out why the laptops icon is missing from vistas network folder. another thing is i used to be able to see both the computers ip, host names and mac addresses in the dhcp client list in my routers settings web page, then i noticed only the pc's were there and now there are none. i don't know what this signifies, if anything, but i thought i would mention it. also (i think) i have worked out that if enable the UPNP option on the routers system settings this is when my routers icon appears in the network folder. thanks for your time and help friend but i'm afraid i'm still no further and it looks like no-one else has any help on the subject.
