Q. I have Microsoft XP Home edition on two machines at home. They are connected to the internet via an SMC Barricade router which connects to my broadband connection. They each can see the internet without a problem, but they can not see each other. How do I get them to see each other so that I can share printers and files? A. That you can see the internet from both machines indicates that you have ‘connectivity’ set up correctly—presumably the router is providing the IP addresses and DNS addresses and gateway information to the individual machines via its DHCP service. So the problem is going to be in the individual machines, possibly in several places. First, see if you have the same WORKGROUP name in each of the machine’s network identification. They must match. Next, each machine must be offering some sort of service before it will be seen by other machines —for example, you may have to go to properties on the printer and establish sharing, or open up the network wizard on the machine(s) and activate folder sharing. Third, you may have as many as three firewalls active which could be causing a problem. The Barricade router provides a firewall that prevents unauthorized access from the internet. There is a built-in firewall in Microsoft XP which will block the machines from seeing each other. You may have to configure these to tell them that machines on your intranet (the same basic IP address—i.e. things that start with 192.168.__.__ if your Barricade is administrating the 192.168 subnet) are ‘friends’ and to be trusted. Fourth, there is a chance that you may have a third-party software firewall installed in the machine such as ZoneAlarm. It too must be told who to trust. There are some utilities on your machine that may be of use in identifying the problem. First, in Windows XP, open a command window—START / RUN / CMD then OK. You will get a DOS command prompt “C>”. Type WINIPCFG /ALL and you will get a list that displays the TCP/IP configuration for your machine. It will show the IP address for the machine. Do this on each machine. Then on one machine, type PING xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx Where the xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx is the address of the OTHER machine. You should get responses. If not, then there definitely is a firewall issue that is preventing the interconnection. Another suggestion was to add the NETBEUI protocol to both machines. This is a non-routable network protocol, that is, it can’t get out to the internet, but it lets intranet machines talk to each other with less configuration issues. A third suggestion was to use the wizard built into Windows XP that creates a file on a diskette that you may then carry to other machines. It contains settings that the corresponding wizard on the other machine reads and uses to configure your network. Q. Be advised that Microsoft has issued a CD that is available for free which has all of the “hot fix” security patches issued for Windows 98, 98SE, NT4, 2000, Me, and XP. A. You can get more information, such as how to order the CD, at this site: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;833242 Q. Has anyone found any reference to something called PTSnoop? A. There is a “backdoor” program whose purpose is to give a hacker RAS access to your machine, if you are running with RAS active. (Not typically the case for a home user.) Note that some older modem programs had a utility/configuration program named Ptsnoop, but this is not the backdoor program. You can find out what it is and how to get rid of it at http://www.f-secure.com/v-descs/ptsnoop.shtml Q. I installed Netscape 7.01, and since then it keeps loading and reloading—I can’t get it to stop. A. The consensus is that your installation may not have properly finished, so it is still trying to finish the install. One member reported it to be a problem related to profiles - that you must establish at least one profile before Netscape finally gives you control of your machine. Other suggestions were to get into FILE then PREFERENCES within Netscape and remove “Quick Start”, and then AOL Instant Messenger and ICQ. Q. I have a bunch of MP3 files on my son’s machine, and for whatever reason, they are marked as “Locked”. I can’t move them, I can’t rename them, I can’t delete them. What’s that all about? A. Files will be locked if they are being used by an application, and will be released when the application finishes. Further questioning indicated that at one time the machine had the peer-to-peer music sharing system “Kazaa” on the machine—it may have marked the files as being locked. There are other file locking mechanisms out there—a search on Google using the ‘advanced search’ limited to the last 3 months and the search string “mp3 files locked” revealed 6,000 plus hits. Browsing some of them showed several utilities that may be used to lock down files and folders. Until you can identify what utility locked them you may have a problem. |
| Bruce Preston is president of West Mountain Systems, a consultancy in Ridgefield, CT specializing in database applications. A DACS director, Bruce also leads the Access SIG. Members may send tech queries to Bruce at askdacs@dacs.org. |
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