My PC wont see may daughters laptop

[happyhero]

Hi can anyone advise me please. My daughter pops round from time to time and brings her laptop. I used to transfer documents between the two.

Recently though I set up security which went ok. When my daughter brought her laptop, I set hers up to connect wirelessly to the net with the new security (WPA-PSK) which went ok but now my main PC doesn't seem to see her machine at all. ie cant see her documents or even her PC under workgroup computers.

Her laptop sees itself and the main PC under WORKGROUP computers but my PC only sees itself. The only security I set was the WPA PSK and changed the SSID, not any other, so kept fairly simple.

The firewall is off on her machine and my machine and it is built into my wireless Belkin modem router.

I've tried adding a network place but the laptop is not there to find a place.

Am I missing something?

Any help appreciated.

 

[Igorian]

Can you ping one machine from the other?

No other security software installed? (NIS for example?)

 

[happyhero]

Can you ping one machine from the other?

No other security software installed? (NIS for example?)

Hi Igorian, I have AVG installed and Webroot for spyware but no NIS.

As for pinging I will need a little guidance how you do it please.

 

[Igorian]

Can you ping one machine from the other?

No other security software installed? (NIS for example?)

Hi Igorian, I have AVG installed and Webroot for spyware but no NIS.

As for pinging I will need a little guidance how you do it please.

First, determine the ipaddress of each machine. Open a command prompt on both machines (START>RUN type CMD and press ENTER. In the window that opens, type ipconfig /all and press ENTER. Note down the ipaddress and default gateway information of each machine.

Then, on each machine, using the same command prompt, type ping ipaddress, where ipaddress is the address of the other machine. It will either time out or reply.

Post back with your results.

 

[happyhero]

I did what you said and all successful, ie there was about 4 lines showing 32 bytes going out and how many ms it took, so ok so far.

 

[Igorian]

Have you created a share on both machines?

If you get stuck, I might be able to help with remote support if you are interested. The most common problems are firewall related, but it's difficult sometimes when you can't see the machine.

 

[happyhero]

Hi Igorian

I was just about to say it's still is not working and I may go for remote support, but I thought I would give it one more try and it just worked. I don't understand what happened because I have done nothing other than what you tell me and I was rebooting yesterday at the right times in case it needed that. Wonder what was up, I had tried the obvious ie switching machines off etc, before.

But there is something I would like to ask you if I may, a bit off the main subject. Whilst doing all this I spotted something in My Network Places, a place I have no previous knowledge of, it is displayed as "documents on www.thermica.co.uk". What could this be? If you put the site up on the net it brings up a site about fire equipment. I cannot access it, so I have finally now managed to delete it after it failed to delete before. Any idea how it would have got there as it is not really one of my network places but rather a website?

Thanks for all your help by the way Igorian, now and before.

 

[Igorian]

It sounds like a remote share, but i'm not sure why it was there.

The reason it all started to work could be because it always was, but the browsers were not updating correctly. If you can ping each machine, then the network is basically running. When you start the network, it can take some time (usually 12-15 minutes) for the browsers to synchronise and they will often show no computers until this is done. This process can take longer if the PCs are not "naturally" part of a network

 

[Astra99]

Is the Server service started on the laptop? The quick way to check is to open a command prompt (start - run - CMD) and type NET START SERVER and hit enter. If it is already running it will tell you so, otherwise it will try to start the service. If it cannot start for any reason, it will give you an error code.
HTH

edit: Whoops - Looked at the date AFTER posting