Anyone good with Home Wireless networks????

osd9

New Member
Oct 3, 2006
4,874
MidAtlantic
Boat Info
2003 410DA
Engines
Caterpillar 3126-TA w/ ZF 80-IV
I've been running a Linksys "B" wireless network for a bunch of years now with only minimal issues.

My daughter is off to college next week, so we went out and bought her a new laptop last week. While I was in Circuit City, one of the local sales guy Geeks talked me into upgrading my "B" to the fancey dancey new "N"...in draft version 2. (D-Link stuff)

I won't bore you with all the "OTHER" problems that this casued me, but I still can't get one feature working, that I really need to work, and I was hoping someone here could help....

I have 5 machines at home....two desktops (DT) and three laptops (LT).

DT1 is wired to the router and running MS XP-Home SP 2
DT2 is wireless PCI "N" card running MS XP-Home SP 2
LT1 is wireless internal "B" running MS 2000
LT2 is wireless internal "B/G" running MS XP Professional SP 2
LT3 is wireless internal "B/G/N" running MS Vista Home Premium

Laptop 3 is the new machine (Toshiba Satellite) and is my problem child. All the machines are joined to a home workgroup called "DOMHOME". Except for LT3, they can share files and printers. I can see LT3 from the the other machines but I can't access any files on LT3 and LT3 can't access any other machine or a printer hanging off of DT1.

LT3 has Symantec Norton and Spyware running (Gary....any old buddies you know that can help) and I have tried going back and forth between MS and Norton Firewall settings.

Toshiba, MicroSoft, and Circuit City are all blamming the "other guy's suff".

Any help would be appreciated....
 
First let me ask do any of these mechines have logins?

I have had the same trouble as you when I bought my vista laptop.

The reason I ask about logins is if you are using them if you put the same logins on all the other pc's/laptops with the same passwords for example BOB login on all pcs with the password BOB123 and TOM login on all pc's with the password TOM123 windows does this thing that if they match form PC to PC then they have permission.

I know that helps but won't solve your problem. The work around I've done is using the hidden admin shares but I believe that only works cause i use login's and they all match as I've explained.

The hidden admin share is C$ or D$ or E$ etc. The other issue is your vista pc won't know the names of your other pc's

SO to get around that look at the other PC's IP (it could change from time to time depending on how your router it setup).

You can then go to your start menu and click on RUN and type:
\\192.168.0.5\C$

Use the IP address and the Drive you want access to.

THis is just a work around. If I find a fix for the other I'll let you know.
 
That laptop with 802.11b is going to slow the whole wifi network down. You really want to look at upgrading it, or putting it on it's own wifi access point. As in, if you upgrade the wifi router keep the old one running, as an access point only, and on a different channel. That way you won't be dragging the other 802.11g/n devices down with it.

Here's an interesting article on Vista networking:
http://www.wi-fiplanet.com/tutorials/article.php/3693871
 
Dominic,

I have the same issue. Bought the kid her new laptop for college. It is running Vista for business and I could not get it to connect to the network at home. But, she could connect to the internet through my wireless setup (g not n).

The good news is that when we took her up to school last week, she was able to connect to the university network without a hitch. The problem will only be when she comes home and wants to print on a network printer.
 
Morpheus said:
First let me ask do any of these mechines have logins?

You can then go to your start menu and click on RUN and type:
\\192.168.0.5\C$

Use the IP address and the Drive you want access to.

I'm not even able to ping another machine from the Vista machine...I can ping the router, just not any of the other machines.

I am using DHCP, so the IPs do change.

I can see where that would help getting to files on other machines (assuming I can that to work) but how does that help you print from the Vista machine?

Morpheus said:
If I find a fix for the other I'll let you know.

Thanks....



wkearney99 said:
That laptop with 802.11b is going to slow the whole wifi network down. You really want to look at upgrading it, or putting it on it's own wifi access point. As in, if you upgrade the wifi router keep the old one running, as an access point only, and on a different channel. That way you won't be dragging the other 802.11g/n devices down with it.

Here's an interesting article on Vista networking:
http://www.wi-fiplanet.com/tutorials/article.php/3693871

When I got the "N", as an offering of grace because of the OTHER problems I won't bore you with, CC threw in the "N" PCI card for DT2 and and "G" router. My plan was/is to run the "G" as an access point into the "N" router. Once you enable anything less than WPA for security, the "N" router only runs as a "G" at best. The "B" and "G" machines I have only support WEP...so my new fancey dancey "N" router is actually running as a "G"...

I'll read the article later...thanks,

Sea Gull said:
The good news is that when we took her up to school last week, she was able to connect to the university network without a hitch. The problem will only be when she comes home and wants to print on a network printer.

That's good to hear Jeff....At least I know she'll be able to work at School....I'll have to talk to their IT guy when we bring her up next week. Maybe he/she can offer some assistance.....however....that would be a good reason for her to stay up on weekends.... :grin:
 
I do not have a solution for your problem.

When we bought our daughters laptop for school this year the College of Charleston recommended not getting Vista as there are known problems when combining Vista and XP together on various networks. The college recommended that everyone stay with XP until Vista gets a fix for the problems with application and networks.

From the CofC website:
The College of Charleston’s IT department is working to identify our programs and systems that may have Vista compatibility issues. Programs already identified as having Vista-related problems can be found at http://www.cofc.edu/it/software/unsupported.pdf. There will be delays in the development and release of patches and software fixes from both Microsoft and other vendors; therefore, it would be prudent to wait until these current--or as yet unidentified--problems have been corrected. For these reasons Student Computing Support is unable to support Windows Vista at this time. If you must buy a new computer, we suggest you purchase it with Windows XP and the option of upgrading to Vista at a future date. Microsoft plans to continue supporting Windows XP so there is no need to rush upgrading to Vista. We will continue to keep the campus informed about Vista-related issues as new information becomes available. If you would like to more information Microsoft has published about technical requirements for Windows Vista-capable PCs. See Windows Vista website for further details.
 
Only trouble is now you can not find a single computer with out Vista. It's being forced on everyone.

Give that "Geek Squad" a call. They advertise all the time about being there in a flash.
 
Geeksquad is a joke there is no gurantee they will fix it but I gurantee they will make you pay an arm and and leg.

Anyways OSD9 I didn't see this mentioned but do you have the firewall turned on the xp machines or on vista?

First check that. Also on vista you have to make sure you turn on sharing.

Next do you have any Norton or antivirus products that might have a firewall too? I'd check that as well.

I got mine working it was Norton firewall blocking it.
 
I have Norton on the Vista machine. MS askes if I want MS to be the firewall so I thought that by saying yes, I was turning off the Norton.

What settings in the Norton were stopping the connection?

thanks,
 
osd9 said:
I have Norton on the Vista machine. MS askes if I want MS to be the firewall so I thought that by saying yes, I was turning off the Norton.

What settings in the Norton were stopping the connection?

thanks,

In Norton in the firewall rules settings I had to uncheck the block NetBios and File sharing think there was a couple others for printers and stuff.
 
Morpheus........You Da' Man.....thanks....that worked....
 
At home I just run the verizon DSL with the provided wireless router, but a few thoughts;

1) both my IBM t60P (great machine) running vista and my toshiba satellite run fine w/ no connection problems.

2) Toshiba satellites are crapola. Remove about half of the software garbage toshiba puts on it and double operating memory before you have anything worth dealing with imho.

3) In the office I have 8 - 10 laptops sharing wireless w/ a mix of 6-8 on xp and 2 running vista with no hickups. I have been pleasantly surprised with vista so far. Internet explorer still has some hickups, but so far vista has proven much more stable than XP in my opinion.

4) HP has a great student computer for a click under 1k, the 6403 is a pretty nifty package with all the bells and whistles a student needs/wants... knowing they will kill it in a few years.
 
RT 240SD said:
........2) Toshiba satellites are crapola. Remove about half of the software garbage toshiba puts on it and double operating memory before you have anything worth dealing with imho. ......

Now you tell me..... :smt021

With regard to the "SW Garbage", would you recommend that I go into the control panel and use the remove program feature??? Any tips on which programs I should remove???

thanks,
 
I'm at work on my glorious Thinkpad. When I get home I'll look at my Toshiba for the stuff I disabled/chucked. It was running like a sabertoothed cat through the La Brea Tar Pits until I cleaned it up. Now it runs fairly well after cleaning up.

The easiest thing to do is go to the Task Manager and look at the processes. Then via internet searching or a third party program, see which of the Toshiba addons are slowing you down via their system drain. I'll have to look again at home but I have a utility that will allow you to drop them in importance or tab them on/off until you reach your personal balance between excessive crap options and operating performance. Keep in mind toshiba add-ons are a hardware companies attempts at software development. 1- it ain't their forte and 2- they make their money on selling more hardware. They'd rather ship an overburdened laptop you need to upgrade memory etc on and buy more hardware than provide you a well functioning machine. They can always blame windows etc for taking too many resources rather than their own add-ons.
 
Best cure is to lose all those lame PC based units, and get a mac with airport extreme.

The bonus is you can make a small dinghy from the pc carcasses. Although they do have a tendency to crash on their own.
:grin:
 

Forum statistics

Threads
112,950
Messages
1,422,886
Members
60,933
Latest member
juliediane
Back
Top