In article ,
Acupro Tech wrote:
I have a client that has been having an ongoing network issue that I cannot
figure out.
They have 6 XP pro boxes configured in a workgroup environment. These
computers will work fine for a few days or sometimes weeks and then one day
they will start their day and the netowrk will be working fine. Then all of
a sudden one of the users will open "My Network Places" and literally watch
all the listed items disappear one by one (normally they have 10 or so items
in the list) until all are gone. As the day progresses they typically will
have this happen on all their machines, but not always.
They have a network hardware firewall/router in place and up to date
Antivirus (Norton) and Antispyware (Counterspy) in place. There is no
indication anywhere of infections.
Solutions tried:
1) Verified all have the same Workgroup name
2) Verified all have different computer names
3) Verified we are using simple file sharing
4) Ping by IP address to different machines generally works
5) I attempted the fixes mention in KB 811259 entitled "How to determine and
recover from Winsock2 corruption"
6) Saw another KB that referenced changing a key from 0 to 1 and verified
that registry key was set appropriately on all machines.
7) Checked wiring
One thing that has tended to work to resolve the problem on one machine at a
time is to do the following:
1) Change the workgroup name to something random.
2) Goto the Nethood folder in the users directory under Documents and
Settings and delete anything in there.
3) Reboot
4) Change the workgroup name back to the original
5) Reboot
6) Wait 4-5 minutes for Network Neighborhood to refind the computers
This work around is tiring and I need to find the cause and solution to
this. Any help would be appreciated.
Chris
As you can see from reading this news group, lots of people have
similar problems. In my opinion, network browsing through My Network
Places is inherently unreliable, and I recommend not using it. You
can spend a lot of time troubleshooting it, but I don't think it's
worth the effort.
To access another computer directly, without using My Network Places,
type the other computer's name in the Start Run box in this format:
\\computer
To access a shared folder directly, type the computer name and the
folder's share name in the Start Run box in this format:
\\computer\share
You can create a desktop shortcut to another computer or shared folder
by specifying the location of the item as:
\\computer
or
\\computer\share
You can even create a desktop shortcut to the workgroup:
1. Open My Network Places.
2. Click "View workgroup computers".
3. Press the Backspace key.
4. Drag/drop the workgroup to the desktop.
--
Best Wishes,
Steve Winograd, MS-MVP (Windows Networking)
Please post any reply as a follow-up message in the news group
for everyone to see. I'm sorry, but I don't answer questions
addressed directly to me in E-mail or news groups.
Microsoft Most Valuable Professional Program
http://mvp.support.microsoft.com