If I'm understanding correctly, your only issue is that your Win7 Laptop, cannot access your Vista Desktop, which is hosting a printer and presumably some shared folders, Is that correct?I'm running Win7 on my laptop (Pavilion), wireless; have access to internet & my home server.
My desktop (Acer) is running Vista; network printer is connected to desktop; the desktop machine can access the internet, and my laptop, and my home server.
From my laptop I can ping my desktop by IP, but not by name; if I try to open the desktop I get "Windows cannot access //desktop"; Win7 diagnosis does not resolve the problem.
My router lists both the laptop & the desktop--both by IP and by computer name--in the LAN list. I usually use the built-in wireless in my laptop, but sometimes use an N-band USB wireless adapter, disabling the built-in; I notice that in the router LAN list my laptop is listed twice, with the same name, but different IP addresses. I don't know if this is related to my printer access problem, or not.
From my laptop I CAN access the desktop's Media Server, which shows up in 'Network & Sharing Center" & the Nework Map ; but although my desktop is on the map, I cannot access it.
I have turned off both firewalls, rebooted both computers, checked all the cables, rebooted the router, and triple checked desktop name and workgroup; nothing works!
I am baffled ...but I need to access my network printer (and would like to be able to access the shared folders on the desktop).
Thanks for any help!
OK, it would seem that something is blocking netbios, probably something on the Vista Machine. Check to see if you have any third party firewalls and or third party AntiVirus / Internet Security Suites running on the Vista Machine, if you do, temporarily uninstall them (you can always put them back later) it seems that turning them off and or disabling them is not sufficient and an uninstall is recommended to make sure that they are not inhibiting network traffic.Thanks, trouble. Here are the results:
Pinging AllieArt-PC [192.168.0.195] with 32 bytes of data:
(four replies - 1 to 2ms)
Then:
ping AllieArt-PC
Ping request could not find host AllieArt-PC. Please check the name and try again.
Also: This morning I unplugged/replugged my router, and then signed into it as administrator. In the LAN list my desktop, my home server, and my laptop were all there, both name & IP (and my laptop was only listed once). But using the system check in my router (D-Link 655), I could ping the IP addresses, but could not ping any computer by name (unresolved error... check name). Maybe the problem is with my router?
Again, thanks for helping.
Good question and I'm not certain that I have a good answer, usually the problem is caused by something a bit more robust that AVG free, like Norton or McAfee etc., (and if you have ever had any of those types of programs installed on the vista machine there may be remnants remaining and I would suggest running their respective removal tools even though they appear to be not installed) but getting back to your original question and this is just a best guess on my part, these programs, when installed seemed to be network aware, at the time of installation and don't seem to cause a problem for any machine or device that exists on the network at the time of their installation, however, when a new machine is introduced into the network then the respective program seems to need additional tweaking to support the new node and many people are not good at making those adjustments to the program, so uninstalling them, getting the network functioning, including the new machine and then reinstalling them seems to make everything work again. Just my best guess. And yes I have seen reports on even AVG causing this problem, although normally it's there paid for suite. Keep in mind, this may not be the issue, it's just a step in a process of several. And a pretty simple one to checkI can certainly do that, trouble, but, first, just to clarify (and for my understanding): other than Windows Firewall (which is currently disabled on both machines) the only security software I'm running is AVG Free, and the identical version is running on both machines. From my desktop I can ping my laptop by name, but not vice-versa. So if AVG is the problem, why wouldn't it gum up both machines?
But if you think uninstalling AVG is the thing to do, I'll get right on it (on both machines, if that is your advice).
I don't quite understand what I've highlighted above. I understood that the netbios name of the Vista machine was allieart-pc so I'm not sure where the other ALLIEART is coming from, is that the work group name of the SSID from the router, For netbios to work properly and reliably you need to make sure that any network adapter that is not being used is disabled, that all computers are members of the same workgroup and that there are no conflicting netbios names and believe it or not, no missing or conflicting mac addresses on the network. It seems that something is still inhibiting netbios information from being propagated properly, sometimes if you map a network drive it will help this issue so on the Win 7 machine open computer and either on the tools menu or the other tool bar, select map network drive, choose S or anything else that's not being used and in the location type \\192.168.nnn.nnn\share (the address of the Vista machine) check the box to reconnect at logon and then reboot your entire network bringing up the Win7 machine last after everything else is up and running.I would still like to be able to access the shared folders on my desktop machine, though. Do you have any ideas on that issue? Where does the name resolution occur, in the router? In the Acer desktop? Why can I access the media server on the Acer? (It is identified as 'ALLIEART-PC: ALLIEART.)