Networking issues

Hoping someone has some fresh ideas. I have my home network with my main computer running win 7 with my HP 1600 laser printer atached. I have 2 laptops bith with vista running. At one point i had them both networked to access the printer through the network. Yesterday i went to enable the backup on the 2 laptops to backup over the network to my spare drive. The one laptop had no issues, the second laptop will not connet anymore. I guess it has been that way for a few weeks. I spent all day searching the net yesterday and nothing. I checked the settings between the 2 laptops and they are identical. The laptop can see my computer on the network but will not connect. The running laptop can see the other laptop no problem over the network but my computer cannot see it? Im stumped im faiirly knowledgable in computers but this has me stumped. The only thing that has changed over the past few weeks is i added a Canon MG5220 printer to the mix and im using the wireless feature to print. Im pretty sure everything was still working after the new printer. I even disabled the firewall on both computers but that did not help.

Are you assigning a static IP address to each device on the network? Sounds like the Canon printer grabbed the address previously used by the second laptop. A networked printer should have a static address assigned to it.

http://www.practically​networked.com/howto/

Same ip adress that all the computers have been using for years. Kept them the same after i put teh new system in. If it was a ip issue nothing would really work as all my computers need a ip to access my router. Troubled machine works fine on the internet and the other laptop can see it no problem and so can the wireless printer. Its a issue someware between the vista and win 7 pc. All kinds of info on the net but none of the solutions seem to work.

I'm sure one the networking experts will jump in and help you resolve the problem.

Here are some random thoughts for things to try:

I suspect the issue started with a Microsoft update applied to either the Win 7 or Vista machine that is preventing communication. Google something like "Vista update breaks communication with Windows 7." I've had similar issues in the past and don't think I ever resolved it.

Have you tried connecting, from either direction, using Windows Explorer and the other machine's IP address? You'll need to have something shared on each machine but it will give you an idea of whether or not the two machines will communicate.

Check permissions on the shared drive you're trying to connect to and make sure they are set correctly.

Try deleting the share for your spare drive and re-creating it.

Try using the "net use" command from the command line to set up the connection to the shared drive from the laptop to the desktop.

Mark

Well finaly got it up and running... Not to sure what the issue was. Uninstalled teh drivers for teh wireles to the new canon printer. Did not work. Created a folder on the affected laptop to share. Could now see the laptop on my windows 7 machine but the laptop could still not connect to the windows 7 machine. Went into the windows 7 machine and went into the win 7 machine and opened up all the sharing permissions for guest, everyone and other accounts. After a reboot teh drive and printer on the windows 7 machine were visable again and able to connect...

man this is beyond frustrating. Was all up and working had teh backup runnng on the laptop to teh win 7 machine. Went out for a while came back all computers had went to sleep. Woke up the laptop backup had completed. When to check the network connection and would not connect again. Rebooted both machines and still noting. yet i can still connect and see the laptop from the windows 7 machine... uggg i give up

zrock wrote in post #11581134
man this is beyond frustrating. Was all up and working had teh backup runnng on the laptop to teh win 7 machine. Went out for a while came back all computers had went to sleep. Woke up the laptop backup had completed. When to check the network connection and would not connect again. Rebooted both machines and still noting. yet i can still connect and see the laptop from the windows 7 machine... uggg i give up

Unfortunately, in their interest to fix security issues with Windows operating systems, Microsoft has really screwed up networking. The problem is with your Window 7 box as evidenced by the fact that you can see the laptop from Window 7, but not the reverse. It is likely a firewall or permissions issue but finding it might take some effort. One thing to make sure is that you don't have "competing firewalls." What I mean is make sure that you aren't running both Windows Firewall and some other software firewall from a virus vendor or similar.

Here's a site that will walk you through troubleshooting connection problems between Windows 7 and other Microsoft OS's:

http://windows.microso​ft.com …erent-versions-of-Windows

Mark

mkel2000 wrote in post #11584856
Unfortunately, in their interest to fix security issues with Windows operating systems, Microsoft has really screwed up networking.

Your posts caused me to go back and look at my connection issues using Remote Desktop between a Mac and Windows 7. I too had tried disabling the Windows 7 Firewall and today discovered that without the Windows 7 Firewall enabled, Windows 7 refuses to accept remote connections (see, I told you they screwed it up!) Once I had enabled the Firewall and changed the Remote settings tab in Control Panel to accept connections from any version of Remote Desktop, I was able to then connect from the Mac to Windows 7 with Remote Desktop. I have a strong suspicion that your backup software uses the Remote Desktop protocol (RDC) to communicate with the Windows 7 box. If the backup software used IPC to connect the drives, I doubt you would have an issue.

Mark