Two PCs refusing to see eachother on network.. randomly

[Passa]

Hi guys.

Have a strange problem here. My home network is predominantly Windows PCs, so I've got a simple setup of a wireless router/ADSL modem combo device, hooked up via LAN to a shared PC that stores all our media and is connected to the printers.

Then there's my desktop and my laptop, both connecting via wifi. All machines are running Windows 7. Both my laptop and the desktop can access the main PC's shared media folders fine. But randomly, my desktop and laptop become unable to share files with eachother.

They go as far as stop responding to pings from each other.. but both can still access the net, and both can still access the media shares. Hell, both can still have their shares browsed by the Macbook on our network. Power cycling all equipment (router and the two machines) all at once has no effect. The problem just comes and goes by itself.

All machines have static IPs allocated by the DHCP server on the router.

Any ideas? Quite stumped. At first I thought it was a NetBIOS issue so tried accessing via IPs, but of course then realised I wasn't even getting reply pings.

 

[MavsX]

they can't ping eachother? something is fucked up in your ip addressing then. Why don't you turn on dhcp and see if that solves the problem for now. good luck man

 

[Passa]

Thanks for the reply. The DHCP server is on - I've just told the router to assign the same IPs to certain MAC addresses. All the computers are still configured to get their IPs from the DHCP server. Doing an ipconfig on each confirms they have the right IP, and the main server PC can ping both of them at their correct IPs.

 

[MavsX]

Thanks for the reply. The DHCP server is on - I've just told the router to assign the same IPs to certain MAC addresses. All the computers are still configured to get their IPs from the DHCP server. Doing an ipconfig on each confirms they have the right IP, and the main server PC can ping both of them at their correct IPs.

how come you're doing that? why wouldn't you just set the machines config statically (on the workstations)?

 

[jvlazzar]

check your client firewall settings...doesn't sound like anything network related

 

[Passa]

how come you're doing that? why wouldn't you just set the machines config statically (on the workstations)?

Easier to configure, and it means I can specify which IPs are behind the URL filter on our router (my sister gets me to block Facebook for her when she's meant to be studying). I've had it set up like this for many years now.

check your client firewall settings...doesn't sound like anything network related

None of the machines run software firewalls beyond Windows Firewall - which is set to 'Home' on the wifi at home.

 

[Passa]

Here's a bit of a mindfuck for you:

The LAN server can ping neither my desktop nor my laptop. The desktop can ping the server but not the laptop. The laptop can ping the server but not the desktop.

Screenshot is of the laptop, with the server in Remote Desktop. Why can I remote desktop in when the server can't ping me back? Who knows.

 

[Netwerkz101]

Why can I remote desktop in when the server can't ping me back? Who knows.

Windows firewall blocks pings.
You have allowed Remote Desktop Connections so firewall does not block RDP session.

As to your original problem/question ....dunno ... but I do know some
wifi routers have a "guestnet" mode to allow internet access but not
peer/workgroup type access.

Have you tried testing via a wired connection?