windows xp home can't "see" network connections.

I do tech support for an internet service provider and I have a customer with a "unique" problem.

The computer does not see the network connections folder, every time I try to access it it freezes the program, like if I go in through the start menu and click on connect to it will freeze the start menu. if I go in through control panel same thing happens. I thought that maybe it was a virus and ran swatit and found nothing, but then all of a sudden I was able to access network connections like the problem was fixed. I shut down the laptop and started it back up and again the thing could not "see" the network connections. I don't really understand what is going on. Thanks in advance for any advice or info you can give me.

Cody

Several things can cause this.

Two or more computers are on the same network and one of the computers is not accessible.

Sharing has been disabled on one of the other computers.

One computer has been removed from the network and Local Browse Mastering has not been established for the remaining computer or computers.

Two or more computers are on the same network with different workgroup names.

Other issues can be causing this if there was a domain controller involved.

It's not unique - I have had my home network set up based around a Linux box and Samba and it's been running happily for several years with a cluster of Win 98 machines: that is, until we got two new Windows XP home machines.

Initially I couldn't even get my new laptop to recognise any other machine on the network, but then, after changing various settings on the network connection everything worked, or so I thought.

If I try to look in "my network places", 50% of the time it just hangs there with that dratted torch, other times it comes up OK and displays all the shares. There seems to be no consistency. I noticed at one stage that Samba had started up over 80 instances of nmbd on the Linux box.

To make matters worse, at one stage my Linux box firewall decided it was under attack on port 139 and locked out all the PCs on the network - I had to reboot it and telnet in to get the erroneous entries out of hosts.deny.

In conclusion, I have down so much fiddling of settings I don't feel that I am in a position to advise anyone on anything about Win XP Home edition, except try and get an alternative version if you can. If everything does settle down, I'll certainly repost with some settings.

I don't try to understand what I read here. It looks to me several different problems occur. I give you some hints:
Do you have a personal firewall or sandbox blocking network access?
Did you change NIC's or NIC PCI-slots?
Are you using same static IP's more than once?
The freezing thing sounds like drivers being there but without hardware.
I've never seen samba causing trouble.

Having the same problem with also with XP.

But, the computer that's doing this is not on a network. It seems that everytime I install a new game or CAD programs it goes to crap. Once it boots the system tray will not appear, and I'm unable to open or see properties of my dialups in network connections. I cannot dialup or connect to the net. So usually just logging off my user and starting over works or just hot-starting also works. I notice that if I remove the NIC out of my box running XP will have the same problem. I removed all new games and software that could have cause this problem and it worked for a while but then it started again. I cannot find the conflict, the way I've found that will fix the problem is to re-install the OS again.

Can someone explain to me what's the problem!! is it a XP problem with other software or what???

THANKS..

Sorry I don't remember the details. Just when XP was being released, I read a review in a computer magazine. One of the things it brought up was that there was something weird in how the home edition did networking that kept it from working in an enterprise LAN. The professional edition worked just fine. The author suggested that this had been done on purpose to keep businesses from trying to use the cheaper home edition -- I don't know how true that is.

Again, I don't remember the details, but that might suggest a path to research this further. Myself, I have Win 2000 at home and Win ME on my laptop. I made a point of buying my laptop before XP came out just so I would not have it. I've had to use XP at school this semester and I am most certainly glad I don't have it at home. I shudder when I wonder what they plan to bring us after XP.

Who cares? Let them produce crap and have all their robots buy it. Myself, I am never buying any product with the word Microsoft on it.

In Windows XP Home edition they removed the ability to logon to a Windows NT (or compatible, ie Samba) Domain Server. Under Windows 95, 98, NT, ME and 2K you could setup the system to logon to a WinNT Domain Controller which would check the username and password before allowing access to the workstation.

With the release of Windows XP they removed this feature from the Home edition. This was done because it was designed as a home product and in a normal home environment there is no WinNT Domain Controller. If anyone needed this functionality they would be required to purchase the Pro edition.

Note: There have been changes to the SMB protocol in Windows XP and 2K. Make sure that you are running the latest version of Samba which supports these changes.

>sigh< Yeah, and unlike dwise1_aol I bought my new laptop just that little bit too late

In fact, this weekend I decided to clear off XP home and load on Win98SE again, as I know this works. Win98 installed fine until I got to the installing hardware, and then I realised that Toshiba had not released drivers for any other OS other than XP, so I had to back it out and reinstall XPH.

This makes me somewhat worried as I assume (ha!) that when I upgrade\from XP I'll still be able to use my laptop

I have in fact already complained to Toshiba about their choice of XP Home and simply got a dismissive reply "take it up with your supplier".

I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't include any drivers at all- XP has a lot built in and you can pretty much install it on any computer without worrying about drivers. For Linux, RedHat has the largest support for hardware, and the majority of a system will work witjout having to recompile. Unfortunately, integrated components usually don't work right and since it's a laptop this presents a bit of a problem.

I am having the exact same problem....

Yet other people I know with XP Home are not.... there has to be a solution to sort this, I cannot find any conflict either... I haven't installed anything for ages, now it's just gone funny all on it's own. HELP please.

In addition - it's not every time I install something new... it seems infrequent. I can access the system tray but not anything to do with the network connections. I dont know what you mean by logging off my user... I'm the sole user... but it worked normally and fine up till recently (i had these probs before, the help morons I spoke to said I should wipe my hard drive - which i did on 4 seperate occasions.)