Vista and Networking

Vista and Networking

Introduction

This snip is about fixing the Vista/XP networking interoperability problems.

I have been issued with a new laptop from work. Its a Toshiba and runs Windows Vista 64 bit.

I originally attempted to introduce Vista to the home network when I bought a new laptop in Sept. See also Dell Laptop, where a networking problem is documented. This page documents my troubleshooting and now resolution. The best advice starts lower down this page.

Links

Also on the Studio page here, I found these resources

• Explore the Features, Networking
• File and Printer sharing

both specific to Vista and from microsoft.com.

I googled the following string "my vista machine can't see other systems on the home lan", which on 13th Jan 2008, returned this page. This pointed at,

• kioskea.net, which recommends turning the firewall off, they use norton and ensuring that the correct NIC protocols are running. They don't specify which.
• Tech Republic has several threads, this one called "Windows Vista & Windows XP can't see each other", should be pretty much what I want.

The Tech Republic thread above mentions Microsoft's Link Layer Topology Discovery protocol. google:lltd, which has a couple of useful looking pages from Microsoft and elsewhere in Tech Republic. This needs to be installed on the XP Machines.

The Dell is running Windows XP Media Center Edition 2002, SP3. The Alienware is running Home Edition SP3. The LLTD needs to be installed on the XP systems. I downloaded and installed and it was reported that my OS was patched to a more recent date and it didn't need to be installed i.e. the patch did not need to be applied. See below.

• Microsoft's LLTD page, includes how to know its installed. It seems it is called the service advertising protocol under XP SP3, and I had to Install it as a service using the Network Connections, -> Appropriate NIC [right mouse] -> Properties applet.
• A Microsoft Technet article, entitled Vista and XP computers can't see each other even though they're on the same network. There's quite a lot there, including install LLTD, turn of the firewalls etc. There is one longish post, by redondo77, posted on 27 April 2007 which points at further Microsoft resources including ensuring that the XP sharing is turned on correctly, and that all users have passwords. This could be it. redondo77 also points at Microsoft's Trouble Shooting File Sharing and Printing. He or She also references This article in the Microsoft Knowledge base, entitled Error message when you try to access a Windows XP-based network computer: "You might not have permission to use this network resource", explains how to use the Registry Editor to permit anonymous connections. I should have googled the error message.

The Tech Republic thread also points at Windows Vista: File Sharing between XP and Vista at cnet.com. This is pretty awesomely detailed, but I have not yet tried its advice.

keywords: lltd, link layer topology discovery, anonymous login

Vista

It can see the appliance and now itself, and I have turned sharing on.

After installing the LLTD on the Alienware, I can now see its devices and write to the shared disk area. The DellXP remains a problem. Is it the Firewall? Its quite odd, since only the Vista machine is prohibited from file sharing. It'd be nice to refer this to the Dell forums, but they're down.

The Vista Workgroup name was misspelt. They are now all the same. This required a reboot. 5th Feb 2009

I have mounted the Shared Documents folder on the Vista Macine, using the My Computer -> Map Network Device command, and using the share name as the argument, prepended by the computer name, not the ip address. I have made a short cut for this. The network centre browser still can't access the share. 5th Feb 2009

I have enabled tested the enablement of filesharing on the laptop, but they have an odd view on how people will use it. I can allow everyone who uses the network to access my shares, or not. So I have left the laptop not sharing the public shares.

There are three parameters,

• File Sharing
• Public folder sharing
• Password Protected sharing

These are accessed from the network sharing center, and I have set them all to strict an will release them when I need to pull files from the Vista machine, or push them to the Vista machine.

XP

The XP Systems can't see the Vista Laptop. I can't work out the share name to act as the argument to Add New Network Place. Mind you I tried this on the Dell which can't be browsed from the Vista machine.

This article in the Microsoft Knowledge base, entitled Error message when you try to access a Windows XP-based network computer: "You might not have permission to use this network resource", explains how to use the Registry Editor to permit anonymous connections. This is referenced in redondo77's article and I can now use the Network Center browser to access the XP Systems's shares. 5th Feb 2009

This also seems to have fixed the remote printing problem.

I can also browse the laptop's public area, but not mount it; the laptop is running Vista and there are a bunch of software switches that need to be set.

I suspect that the anonymous connection became prohibited when I installed passwords on all users on the system. I am surprised that it didn't ask for a user login and password but what the heck. The second XP system had identical users configured.