Internal LAN computer names not working

J

jrbryner

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Feb 6, 2001
Messages
1,530
Hey guys,

A little background story: I have a fileserver connected to my Netgear wireless router that's been working fine for quite a while. Last week I bought a new laptop and got it all setup with XP Pro, had everything running fine. I made an exchange on the laptop, and when I got the new laptop, I swapped out the harddrives so I wouldn't have to reinstall everything. Well, ever since then I haven't been able to access local computers by their network names, on my home network, or at work. Usually I've been able to find a computer by \\ComputerName. That doesn't work anymore. The network browser will show the computers in a workgroup, but when I try to explore that computer, I get a path not found error. I can however type in a computers local IP address and it will work fine.

Any ideas?
 
Before you really start digging, I'd create a HOSTS file entry on that XP machine
with a record for one box on the netwrok. Then try to UNC by PC name into that box.

location: Windows NT/2000/XP Pro c:\winnt\system32\drivers\etc\hosts
open with notepad

should see
127.0.0.1 localhost

below that add your pointers
192.168.1.20 PCNAME (insert proper IP and PC name obviously)
 
That did work. But it's only for the computers that I enter in there. What would be causing it not react to the names?

Thanks for the help.
 
Well it's technically a DNS issue. How many PC's do you have? If it's not that many you can just copy that single host file to all the machines to circumvent the issue.
 
Just my laptop that I use between work and home. At home I just connect to my fileserver, but at work I need to connect to 5 or 6 different computers regularly (fileservers also).

Evidently, if I have an entry in the hosts file for a computer that's not on the network, it crashes Dreamweaver. I have an entry for my fileserver at home. When I get to work and just open Dreamweaver, it locks up. I take out the entry, Dreamweaver works fine.

Dang computers... Well, I've only had this for a week or so, so I could just format. Would like to find the cause though. Seems to have something to do with swapping the hard-drive from my old laptop into this one. Could it be something with MAC addresses, since they'd be different between my old laptop on this one.
 
Update:
I formatted and got things were working well for a while. After a week or so, it started doing this same thing again. Instead of formatting again, I did a system restore to the previous day and all was good again. All I did between the two days was install the Java plugin and PowerDVD. Since then I've reinstalled Java, but not PowerDVD.

So after that it was running good until yesterday, when the problem came up again. This time though I didn't have a very recent restore, so I had to go back a week. No biggy since I hadn't installed anything major. But I don't have a clue as to what would have caused this thing to start screwing up again.

It's working now, but I'm going to keep a very close eye on it and see if I can't track down what I do before it stops working again.
 
Started doing it to me again today. I'll I've installed lately is a bluetooth mouse (Microsoft Intellimouse). I've got a system restore from a week ago that should fix it, but I still can't find what's causing this or how to fix it other than formatting or the system restore.
 
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