[charwing]

My network here at home is comprised of 2 PCs (PIV, WinXP), 2 Macs (G4, G5), two 8 port network switches ganged together, a gateway router, a WAP, 2 printers (one connected directly to the netswitch, one connected to the netswitch thru a USB printer hub), and cable modem.

I have the WinXP machines set up in a Workgroup (NetBEUI protocol installed). That works OK -- no problem there. I am trying (once again) to introduce a laptop from work that is set up to be logged into a Domain. It is also runs WinXP Pro. I'm not having much success.

After much, much effort, I managed to do this with my previous office laptop (WinXP Pro, set up to login to the same domain) -- and managed to get it to work reasonably well. I had it set up so that the Workgroup name was the same as the Domain name (COMPANYNAME and COMPANYNAME.ORG). Adding in the NetBEUI protocol to my laptop, it was able to enter into the Workgroup here and access the other 2 WinXP Pro workstations. The reverse didn't work too well -- Remote Desktop was my solution for that. It was also able to access the printers by name (not just by IP address) or one of my workstations that had was sharing the printers. All in all -- after a lot of trial and error, I got things to work. This worked whether it was connected hard wire (connected to the net switch) or wireless (thru the WAP).

Last week, I got the NEW laptop (3 yr life cycle replacement plan at work) -- same WinXP Pro but with some new bells and whistles -- internal wireless, etc. -- and I tried the same approach. It worked but not really. Was able to enter the Workgroup OK and access the other machines but not the other way 'roound. I should have just let it alone at that point and been happy with it. But no...I had to twiddle with it...got fooling around with the authentication settings (hadn't been accessible on the previous laptop), thinking that THIS would finally let the Workgroup computers access my company laptop. Didn't seem to help. So I did other stuff having to do with registering the computer name on the network and other stuff (forgotten exactly what) and now I've really hosed it. Now , when the laptop is connected to the network directly (hard wired) it can see the Workgroup but is being forbidden access to the Workgroup itself. Still, I can ping the computers in the Workgroup and set up network connections with them by IP adresss. But the reverse is definitely not true -- can't see it in the Workgroup, can't ping it, can't set up a network connection to it.

But....if I connect the laptop to the network through the WIRELESS connection, the laptop shows up as part of the Workgroup and can access the other computers in the Workgroup. While the reverse is not exactly the same -- you can't access the laptop from a Workgroup computer thru the network window -- it is possible to set up a network connection to it by its IP address.

I could say -- OK -- I've got a way to make the laptop part of the net -- but it would ONLY be if it's entry point is Wireless. I really WOULD like to have it included when it's connected to the net directly -- 100 Mbps is definitely better than 11 Mbps thru my 8022.11b WAP.

Frankly, I don't know what to do or what I did wrong. Hope that somebody out there might have some ideas to offer. I'm out of them. Thanks!

[Advertisements]

Can I assume you cannot simply change from Domain to workgroup---is, you do not have permission to join a machine to a domain?

[gerryf]

Can I assume you cannot simply change from Domain to workgroup---is, you do not have permission to join a machine to a domain?

[charwing]

Nice idea -- one I explored a few years ago when the company 'upgraded' from Win98 to Win2K (and then to WinXP Pro). It was a defininte no-no. I had to contact our user services to get myself back in the domain again when I returned to the office the next day. Told never-never do that again. The other alternative is to do like a colleague of mine does until he (like I did) got a new machine last week -- just don't join the company domain at all but then subject yourself to not being able to access company resources very easily (or at all) -- such as printers, internal web sites, community share portals, etc. To me -- simply not worth the hassle.

Win98 was SO simple...buggy as it was... but at least the domain/workgroup business was not an issue.

Thanks for your reply!

Char

[gerryf]

What, specifically, do you need to access on a) the home network, and b) the laptop

One of the big reasons why XP is the way it is because IT departments demanded these changes or they would not purcchase XP.

[charwing]

1) To work at home from either my laptop (in wired or wireless mode) with access to all the stuff I have here -- printers, etc.
2) Occasionally to do work stuff on my own workstation without haviing to tunnel into the office server to which I backup all my important data files using Briefcase. Direct connnect @ 100Mbps better at Broadband speeds.
3) To work with files on my laptop from my workstation (3.2 GHz PIV vice 2.2 PM)
4) "Cause that's what I want to do, what I've been doing for years, want to continue to do, and ... because I'm just a difficult, cantankerous, old employee (52 yrs old employed at the same place for 23 yrs), who wants to have flexibility as to how and where I do what I do. java script:emoticon('', 'smid_13')
My title is "Lead Information Systems Engineer" which, I guess, means that I don't tend to follow all the dictates of our Corporate IT dept except when it suits me or is absolutely positively required (running corporate provided antivirus, firewall, secure tunneling software, etc.)

[gerryf]

I'm a little fuzzy on what you have tried so far, so let's start at the beginning

http://www.microsoft...mainjoined.mspx

The above is a walk through on setting up what I think parallels your setup

Reading through that, what do you still need to do?