3com file sharing frustration, anybody

Hi to all the experts out there, i'm a newbie at this networking game and desperatley needs some advice on setting up file sharing on my network.

I have recently purchased the 3com adsl router 3CRWE754G72 with the 3CRWE154G72 card.
Even though my broadband has not been connected as yet, I have setup the adsl router preparing them for the connection. I have two wired computers connected to the router plus1 laptop. Follwoing the setup guide provided, all the pc's have been recognised by the router and I can access the routers web interface from any of the 3 computers.

The biggest hurdle I cannot overcome and have been going crazy over for 3 days is the ability of the computers to communicate with each other, for file sharing.
I have been all over the net reading forums and network setup guides following procedures, altering settings, starting from scratch but i still cannot file share.

What i have found out is that the computers can be pinged to each with no data loss, I can play games between computers (multiplayer) so that means they recognise each other somehow but not during filesharing, whilst trying to add shared folders.

I have also download a network magagment amd remote software (winshadow), but even that cannot access other computers.

settings

PC1,PC2 with XP Pro and laptop with XP Home
all firewalls have been disabled hardware and software, including ICF
the ip address are set by routers dhcp
netbios is set over tcp/ip
MS file sharing protocols are installed

Please could anyone help me out, Im going nuts about how to do this.
I know for a fact that not having the adsl feed yet does not affect the communication between the computers lack of communication, as the routers other jobs is to give communication between computers.

come experts please, my childern are going mad because im hogging the computers till this is done.

If you can ping between the computers fine, what happens if you type \\computername into the address bar of one of the computers (replacing computername with the name of another computer)? What error message do you get?

hi, I had tried that before from pc1 to pc2, pc1 to laptop and laptop to pc1 and it keeps saying "that access seems to be invalid, please choose another".
I tried with the basic sharedocs folder and another folder I enabled as shared.

amazingly I tried that very recently between pc2 to pc1 and was able to acces the sharedDocs folder without problems.(and thats with norton internet security firewall enabled) It would suggest that certain settings on the laptop and pc1 are different to pc2.

is their anyway of checking and copying the exact settings from pc2 to the rest of the computers.
Recently I was reading about services that run on XP, and I had disabled some on the laptop and pc1. do you think anyone of these services would hinder the sharing of files.

I'm not exactly sure what that error message is. Could you take a screenshot an attach it please?

For the time being, I'd disable any firewalls, such as Norton and ICF, just in case there is a setup problem.



Not that I know of, but as long as the computers have a good IP address, don't have firewalls blocking communication and are connected properly, you should be able to communicate.



It depends what you disabled. You could compare the services list on two computers and reset them, just to make sure, or you could use system restore to go back to how it was before.

hi, yeah i have disabled the firewalls/icf.

i,ve also tested and realised that after testing file sharing from pc2 to pc1 (which was successful) I tested file sharing from pc2 to laptop, it would not do it, go figure!

here is the error screen shot, as an attachment

cheers

Interesting screenshot, I've never seen that one before.



I presume that you can ping from PC2 to PC1, but are you able to ping from PC2 to the laptop? I would guess not, but could you just double check that please.

hi edwinbrains,

I can ping from any computer to any in any direction, this is what i don't understand, in theory I should be able to share in any direction! can I?

I also did another test, i've got a portable printer connected to the laptop. I added the printer to pc2 as a shared peripheral, it worked.
but again I could not add the printer to pc1.

What are you using in terms of passwords. Try setting exactly the same username/password on all computers and then try again.

hi edwinbrains, i've solved the problem.

the problem was due to the services, specifically "server" service.(well it all started working after enabling this)
I went onto vipers website to get a safesetup services patch and after applying It I enabled the server service (the patch disabled the service, security reasons).

Coincidently the laptop and pc1 were xp service pack 1 and pc2 had not been updated. So I guess the service pack disabled that service.

Thanks for the help and suggestions give.
Hope this is of interest to you, and pass it on as another tip method that could be expored.

Glad that you've got it working. Thanks for the feedback