Yet another printing problem with FiOS
jsch10463
Newbie

Several people have written in with the same problem but I cannot find a consistent fix that will work in my case.  So, let's go through this scenario again.

We have a workstation connected directly to the FiOS router.  The workstation also has two printers and an external drive connected to it.  We have three laptops.  All laptops can access the Internet via the FiOS router.  They all use XP.

When we were with Comcast, any laptop could print to any printer and could access the external drive.  The laptops accessed the printers and external drive through the workstation. 

Since we moved to FiOS, the laptops cannot access the printers or the external drive.  Several times, I went through the Windows process to "set up the network."  In every cases, the computers could not even find each other.  They could ping the router, Google, et, but no other device in the house.

I called Verizon, they sent a technician to our home.  The technician does not do anything with computers, but gave me a new router.  I installed the second router.  Nothing changed.  All machines can access the Internet.  The laptops cannot find the workstation, the workstation cannot find the laptops, the laptops cannot print or access the external drive.

What is required to allow the laptops print or access the external drives (other than moving back to Comcast)? 

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Re: Yet another printing problem with FiOS
dslr595148
Community Leader
Community Leader
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Re: Yet another printing problem with FiOS
viafax999
Community Leader
Community Leader

You must have changed subnets when you went from Comcast to FiOS

E.G.  your network changed from 192.168.0.xxx   to 192.168.1.xxx

You wil need to delete all the entries in the client machines network neighborhood and recreate them, this will be with the correct addresses.  You probably should also check the HOSTS file for printer entries etc. setup by printer software installations, this file is a text file that can be opened with notepad and can be found at

windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

Hope this helps

Regards Peter

 I have the same issue but what I just said doesn't appear to resolve it.  I have managed to get rdp (mstsc) working by name again but am still having issues getting to my server shares.  Will update this later

OK I can see the client workstation shares now, didn't have to delete anything, The reason that I couldn't see the server shares is that the folders were no longer being shared.  Would like to know what deleted the shares.  Anyway recreated shares, deleted the entries on client workstations and recreated them by adding network places and all ok now.

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Re: Yet another printing problem with FiOS
jsch10463
Newbie

This discussion, including your two responses remind me that I was a liberal arts major.  I read your words but cannot improve the problem.

Peter,

I found the file your referenced but the only thing I found that looked like a subnet read as follows:  127.0.0.1 localnost

As you predicted, the router has an adddress of 192.168.1.x.   Is this what you are talking about? 

What do you mean by "you willneed to delete all the entries in the client machines network neighborhood"  and "also check the HOSTS file for printer entries etc."?

Dslr:

I do not understand your posting.  I followed the link toe practically networked.com regardiong XP (not XP Pro).  There was discussio about the file sharing wizard.  I used that wizard a long time ago, but was not able to get anything to share.

I need still more help.

Joe

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Re: Yet another printing problem with FiOS
viafax999
Community Leader
Community Leader

From your ref to localhost 127.0.0.1 it means you have no fixed entries in your local hosts file - that's OK

I'm sure the router is 192.168.1.1

On the machine with the shered drive and printers press start and select run then enter CMD and hit enter

type ipconfig and hit enter, this will give you the ip address of the sharing machine - probably 192.168.1.1 - make a note of the address

Right mouse click on my computer and select properties.  Select the computer name tab and make a note of the Full computer name and Domain/Workgroup

Start My Computer and make sure the drive you want to be accessed by the LT's is shared - it will have a little hand under it if its is.  Alternatively right mouse click the drive you want to share and select Sharing and Security.  Make sure the Share this folder radio button is selected and make a note of the share name.  NOTE that by default the drive will be shared as X$ where X is the drive letter - this is an admin share and you really don't want your other users connecting to that so you should have a different share name on it.  Select the permissions for the shae and make sure they are set to everyone.

You no have all the details needed to access the shared drive from the Laptops

On the laptop push start and My Network Places.

Select Add a network place then select nect on the wizard and then Choose another network location and next

Select Browse and then expand Entire network, expand Microsoft Windows Network and then expand the domain/workgroup name you noted earlier for the sharing machine, expand the sharing machine entry and you will see the shares you've created on the sharing machine,

You can either select the share name you want or drill down in the folder, whichever you do finally say OK and the wizard will create you an entry in your network neighborhood that you can use in the future

My guess is that you already have some entries in My network places that are no longer working because they are referring to your old network addresses.

An alternative to this manual way of doing it.

Push start and select Help and Support

search on file sharing wizard

push the highlighted Network Setup Wizard and it will walk you thru the process of setting up file and print sharing on each of your machine - My machines are members of a Domain so I have to do it manually and have not used the file and print sharing wizard since the ealy days of XP Beta.

Hopefully this helps you a little more

Peter