My old WinXP desktop machine finally died this morning and I decided to
replace it rather than try to fix it. Of course you can't buy an XP machine
anymore so I wound up with a shiny new Gateway desktop with Vista Home
Premium installed. My home network consist of two desktop machines directly
connected (wired) to a Belkin wireless G router, several laptops connected
via wireless to the same router and a Linux box wired to the same router. The
Linux box is file and print server via Samba. I have an HP 990c printer
connected to one of the desktops, a Canon i960 connected to another and a
Samsung ML-1210 laser printer connected to the Linux box. All of the disks on
all of the machines and all of the printers are shared with the entire
network. Nothing is password protected. Everything worked fine until this
morning.
Unfortunately replacing one of the desktops with the new Gateway Vista
machine has caused nothing but trouble. I gave the Vista machine the same
workgroup name as all the other machines. The Vista machine is able to see
and manipulate the files on all of the other machines as well as print on the
HP 990c printer attached to the other desktop.
Problem #1: When I try to add the Samba printer on the Vista machine it is
not detected. When I type the name directly (\\server\lp, the same name that
works on all the other machines) I get an error message that says "Windows
cannot connect to the printer. The server print spooler is not running.
Please restart the spooler on the server or restart the server machine."
Printing on this printer works fine on all the other machines. Windows
Explorer shows the server under "Network" with the other machines on the
network and I was able to map network drives (L: and M
to the two Samba
data shares. However, when I try to open the server to see the shares and,
more important, the printer I get the error "\\SERVER is not accessible. You
might not have permission to use this network resource. Contact the
administrator of this server to find out if you have access permissions. A
remote procedure call (RPC) protocol error occurred."
I went to the Network and Sharing Center on the new Vista machine and turned
Network Discovery on, File sharing on, Public folder sharing on, Printer
sharing on, Password protected sharing Off and Media sharing Off. I shared
the C drive and the connected Canon i960 printer.
Problem #2: All of the XP machines are able to see the new Vista machine
under View Workgroup Computers, just like they see all the other XP machines.
However, unlike the XP machines, any attempt to open the Vista machine to see
the shared components results in the error message "\\MachineName is not
accessible. You might not have permission to use this network resource.
Contact the administrator of this server to find out if you have access
permissions. The network path was not found." Any attempt to access the Vista
machine shares from any of the XP machines yields the same result.
So, Vista can't see the Samba printer, but can see the Samba data shares.
Vista can see all the file and printer shares on the XP machines. The XP
machines can see the Samba printer and data shares. They can see the printers
and data shares on the other XP machines, but they can't see the file or
printer shares on the Vista machine. I've tried turning password protected
sharing on and creating identical users and passwords on all the machines
without any change. The only firewall running on any of the machines is the
Windows firewall. I have turned it off on all machines without any change. I
restarted the router to see if that would help, no change.
Problem #3: After all this fooling around I restarted the machine and
crashed to a "Blue Screen of Death". The machine restarted without any
apparent problem.
This machine is not going to be very useful to me if I can't get the network
happening. Any suggestions? I've tried pretty much everything I can think of,
or could find in the discussions.
Thanks,
Mike
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