Can't See My Laptop in the Workgroup

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Terry Straehley - 30 Jun 2004 05:42 GMT

I have a laptop and a desktop which are connected as a workgroup in my
home office - using XPPro on both machines. Originally, the laptop
would show up as part of the workgroup, both on itself and on the
desktop. Now it doesn't show up as a part of the work group either on
itself or on the desktop.
The desktop and its shares shows up on the laptop (and on itself) and
files can be transferred using explorer on the laptop, but not from the
desktop.
I add the laptop to the workgroup, but it never shows up.
The two units are behind a common firewall, but neither has its own
firewall.
From time to time, I take the laptop to a client's and become a member
of their domain and that works just fine.
Why can't I see the laptop as part of a workgroup when I switch it back?

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Erwin H. (Terry) Straehley
mailto:straehle@strassoc.com
http://www.strassoc.com

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Chuck - 30 Jun 2004 08:04 GMT

>I have a laptop and a desktop which are connected as a workgroup in my
>home office - using XPPro on both machines. Originally, the laptop
[quoted text clipped - 10 lines]
>of their domain and that works just fine.
>Why can't I see the laptop as part of a workgroup when I switch it back?

Terry,

When did the laptop start not showing up as a part of the workgroup? Was that
perhaps after you had taken it to a client's? At the client's, do you actually
join it to the client's domain? When you "switch it back", are you re adding it
to the same workgroup as the desktop? And do you restart it after re adding to
the workgroup?

How often do you restart the desktop? Have you tried doing so after restarting
the laptop?

Make sure the browser service is running on each computer in the workgroup.
Control Panel - Administrative Tools - Services. Verify that the Computer
Browser service is started.

The Microsoft Browstat program will show us what browsers you have in your
domain / workgroup, at any time.
<http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=188305>

You can download Browstat from:
<http://www.dynawell.com/reskit/microsoft/win2000/browstat.zip>
<http://rescomp.stanford.edu/staff/manual/rcc/tools/browstat.zip>

Browstat is very small (40K), needs no install, and runs from the command
prompt. Just drop it onto a couple workstations, and run it.

Please provide browstat information for each computer.
Start - Run - "cmd". Type "browstat status >c:\browstat.txt" into the command
window - Open c:\browstat.txt in Notepad, copy and paste into your next post.

Please provide ipconfig information for each computer.
Start - Run - "cmd". Type "ipconfig /all >c:\ipconfig.txt" into the command
window - Open c:\ipconfig.txt in Notepad, copy and paste into your next post.

From each computer, test shares visibility (use actual name / address of each
computer as appropriate):
Start - Run then:
1) \\ThisComputerByName
2) \\ThisComputerByIPAddress
3) \\OtherComputerByName
4) \\OtherComputerByIPAddress
Report visibility of shares / error displayed in each test (8 tests total).

You can read more about the Browser service here (but have a large pot of coffee
handy):
<http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/winntas/deploy/prodspecs/ntbrowse.mspx>

And Terry, please don't contribute to the spread and success of email address
mining viruses. Learn to munge your email address properly, to keep yourself a
bit safer when posting to open forums. Protect yourself and the rest of the
internet - read this article.
http://www.mailmsg.com/SPAM_munging.htm

Cheers,
Chuck
Paranoia comes from experience - and is not necessarily a bad thing.

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Terry Straehley - 30 Jun 2004 19:04 GMT

Chuck
Thanks for the reply
Somewhere after checking to see that the browsing service was running on
both computers (It was) and running browstat on the desktop (which
showed the proper number of computers but not the other computer (backup
server) the laptop appered.
Thanks for your help and I will keep your message in case this happens
again.

Signature

Erwin H. (Terry) Straehley

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Chuck - 30 Jun 2004 19:18 GMT

>Chuck
>Thanks for the reply
[quoted text clipped - 4 lines]
>Thanks for your help and I will keep your message in case this happens
>again.

Terry,

That sounds like the browser issue. Search for "51 minutes" in the large
document.

Cheers,
Chuck
Paranoia comes from experience - and is not necessarily a bad thing.

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