Cannot see Workgroup PC's through new router

Hi,

When my Netgear DG814 died last week, I replaced it with a DG834. I got
it set up and it connects to the Internet just fine. However, I can no
longer see any of the other 3 PC's in the Workgroup. This means I
cannot share the printer nor acccess the shared folder we have.

I spoke to Netgear Support who said "No problem, just go into the
router settings and tick the box for "Disable Port Scan and DOS
Protection".

This doesn't seem right to me as doesn't this switch off the firewall
completely.

Is there a way round this without killing the firewall?

Yvonne

"Yvonne" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed) ps.com...
> Hi,
>
> When my Netgear DG814 died last week, I replaced it with a DG834. I got
> it set up and it connects to the Internet just fine. However, I can no
> longer see any of the other 3 PC's in the Workgroup. This means I
> cannot share the printer nor acccess the shared folder we have.
>
> I spoke to Netgear Support who said "No problem, just go into the
> router settings and tick the box for "Disable Port Scan and DOS
> Protection".
>
> This doesn't seem right to me as doesn't this switch off the firewall
> completely.
>
> Is there a way round this without killing the firewall?
>
> Yvonne
>

What are you running (Windows XP?) on the PCs? I don't know the DG814 but
my DG384G assigns IP addresses using DCHP (they're all in the range
192.168.0.XXX). I needed to configure the firewalls on my PCs to realise
that any PC with an IP address in this range was "a friend" and that access
was allowed.

You can be more precise by doing the following...

1. Look at the DG384G config to discover which MAC addresses your PCs have.
2. Use the "reserve addresses" feature to ensure that each MAC address (PC)
is always assigned the same IP address.
3. Enable each firewall to only let through the IP addresses reserved for
the other machines.

Might be overkill but some feel its worth doing this.

BTW, if this is a DG384G, make sure you have MAC filtering, WPA-PSK, hide
SSID, changed SSID from the default etc. configured on the wireless side.
Don't want any unexpected "guests" do you ;-).

Paul DS

"Yvonne" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed) ps.com...
> Hi,
>
> When my Netgear DG814 died last week, I replaced it with a DG834. I got
> it set up and it connects to the Internet just fine. However, I can no
> longer see any of the other 3 PC's in the Workgroup. This means I
> cannot share the printer nor acccess the shared folder we have.
>

Do you have the same software firewall on all three computers? try disabling
it just to see if that is the problem, ie your old address series
192.168.x.x was maybe 1.x and now it is 0.x

Gaz

Gaz wrote:

> Do you have the same software firewall on all three computers? try disabling
> it just to see if that is the problem, ie your old address series
> 192.168.x.x was maybe 1.x and now it is 0.x
>
> Gaz

I don't have any firewalls on any of the PC's. In the past, I've relied
successfully on the DG814's firewall and NAT features. When the DG834
was installed, no changes whatsoever were made to the PC's
configuration.
I can ping the DG834 and any of the PC's from each of the PC's. The IP
addresses of the PC's are 192.168.0.2 , 192.168.0.3 and 192.168.0.4.

Yvonne

"Yvonne" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed) ups.com...
> Gaz wrote:
>
>> Do you have the same software firewall on all three computers? try
>> disabling
>> it just to see if that is the problem, ie your old address series
>> 192.168.x.x was maybe 1.x and now it is 0.x
>>
>> Gaz
>
> I don't have any firewalls on any of the PC's. In the past, I've relied
> successfully on the DG814's firewall and NAT features. When the DG834
> was installed, no changes whatsoever were made to the PC's
> configuration.
> I can ping the DG834 and any of the PC's from each of the PC's. The IP
> addresses of the PC's are 192.168.0.2 , 192.168.0.3 and 192.168.0.4.
>
> Yvonne

go to run and type
\\192.168.0.2 (from any of the PCs that arent 0.2) and see if you can access
the shared folders on them, try it on the other pcs.

Gaz

Gaz wrote:


>
> go to run and type
> \\192.168.0.2 (from any of the PCs that arent 0.2) and see if you can access
> the shared folders on them, try it on the other pcs.
>
> Gaz

Did that, and still can't see the shared folders. Whilst I can Ping any
PC, none of the PC's can see any other PC in Network Neighborhood so
there's no way I'd be able to see the folders.
I've done ipconnfig /release and ipconfig /renew on each PC and that
goes OK. Also I get internet access from any PC. So surely it's got to
be something about the DG834's default settings.as I had full sharing
across the workgroup on the DG814 on its default settings.
Stumped I am.
Yvonne

Paul D.Smith wrote:

> What are you running (Windows XP?) on the PCs?

I'm running XP on 2 PC's and W2K on the other.

>I don't know the DG814 but
> my DG384G assigns IP addresses using DCHP (they're all in the range
> 192.168.0.###).

The DG814 is an early predecessor to the DG834 ie a wired (only)
Modem/router with DHCP/NAT/Firewall - same as your DG834G but no
wireless capability.

>I needed to configure the firewalls on my PCs to realise
> that any PC with an IP address in this range was "a friend" and that access
> was allowed.

I don't have any firewalls running on the PC's.
..
Yvonne

On 19 Oct 2006, "Yvonne" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>So surely it's got to be something about the DG834's default settings as I
>had full sharing across the workgroup on the DG814 on its default settings.

Would seem rather odd for that to be the problem (because as far as I know,
the kit I've got here has a 4-port hub/switch with a single connection to
the router portion (and thence the ADSL modem connection) so "rules" for
what to pass/drop are carried out between the one connection off this
nominal "hub" and the router, not on each of the 4 ports (which is how
your setup is behaving, apparently).

Really quite puzzling why this is no longer operating. If you have access
to some 5+ port hub/switch that you could use to connect the PCs on, with
one connection from that unit back to the DG834G (or let the PCs learn IP
addresses, then plug them into the hub/switch) you can see if the DG834
is causing it to stop working, or something PC-side... I've a half dozen
hubs and switches, with anything up to 24 ports, which I'd happily lend,
but have no idea where you are... Anyway, these days 5 and 8 port units
come pretty cheap (though I understand any reluctance to buy when you'd
normally not need to do so). Good luck.

NoNeedToKnow wrote:

>
> Really quite puzzling why this is no longer operating. If you have access
> to some 5+ port hub/switch that you could use to connect the PCs on, with
> one connection from that unit back to the DG834G (or let the PCs learn IP
> addresses, then plug them into the hub/switch) you can see if the DG834
> is causing it to stop working, or something PC-side... I've a half dozen
> hubs and switches, with anything up to 24 ports, which I'd happily lend,
> but have no idea where you are... Anyway, these days 5 and 8 port units
> come pretty cheap (though I understand any reluctance to buy when you'd
> normally not need to do so). Good luck.

Many thanks for the offer but I can borrow a small hub from work next
Monday so I might give that a try.

Yvonne

Yvonne wrote in
(E-Mail Removed) om:

> Gaz wrote:
>
>
>>
>> go to run and type
>> \\192.168.0.2 (from any of the PCs that arent 0.2) and see if you
>> can access the shared folders on them, try it on the other pcs.
>>
>> Gaz
>
> Did that, and still can't see the shared folders. Whilst I can Ping
> any PC, none of the PC's can see any other PC in Network
> Neighborhood so there's no way I'd be able to see the folders.
> I've done ipconnfig /release and ipconfig /renew on each PC and that
> goes OK. Also I get internet access from any PC. So surely it's got to
> be something about the DG834's default settings.as I had full sharing
> across the workgroup on the DG814 on its default settings.
> Stumped I am.

Hmm. I'm a bit stumped by this one too. My immediate thought was software
firewalls such as Norton, but you're not using one. And all the PCs can ping
each other as well as pinging the router?

From a DOS prompt (which you'd use for ipconfig or ping) on one of the PCs,
try the following commands and see if any of them work. I'm assuming the the
PC that you're running the commands on is called PC1 and the other two PCs
are called PC2 and PC3 (as shown by the hostname command at the DOS prompt).

- ping PC1
- ping PC2 (should successfully resolve the name to an IP, then ping
that IP)
- net view (should display hostnames of all PCs in workgroup)
- net view \\PC1 (should display PC1's shares on PC1)
- net view \\PC2 (should display PC2's shares on PC1)
- net view \\192.168.0.2 (PC1's IP)
- net view \\192.168.0.3 (PC2's IP)

If these comands fail, the error number may give a clue to the problem. The
normal failure of "net view \\pc1" is error 53 "path not found", indicating
that the PC cannot locate the remote computer by network name.

Open the router's config page by browsing to 192.168.0.1. (By the way, I
suggest you add a line "192.168.0.1 router" to
\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts (with a tab character before "router")
so you can browse to a "URL" of "router", to save you having to type in the
router's IP each time.)

I presume the DG834 is very similar to the DG834G and DG834GT (54 and 108
Mbps wireless versions of the DG834 non-wireless router) and will have
similar menus.

Look on the Maintenance -> Attached Devices menu: you should see the IP
addresses of all attached PCs. The Device Name column should show the each
PC's hostname; if it says Unknown, that suggests that PCs are not
broadcasting their names.

It may help to enable TCP NetBIOS on each of the PCs, as NetBIOS is one of
the mechanisms by which PCs broadcast their names so they can access each
others' shares. To do this:

- Control Panel | Network Connections | (right click on Local Area Network
icon) | Properties
- Highlight TCP/IP in " This connection uses"
- on the General tabsheet, press Advanced and then switch to the WINS
tabsheet
- In "NetBIOS setting" change from Default to Enable NetBIOS; press OK as
required


Back in DOS prompt, try "nbtstat -n" which should give a list like

NetBIOS Local Name Table

Name Type Status
---------------------------------------------
MARTINLAPTOP <00> UNIQUE Registered
MARTINLAPTOP <20> UNIQUE Registered
MUND <00> GROUP Registered
MUND <1E> GROUP Registered
MUND <1D> UNIQUE Registered
..__MSBROWSE__.<01> GROUP Registered

where, in my case, MARTINLAPTOP is this PC's hostname and MUND is the
workgroup.

Similarly, "nbtstat -a PC2" should display a corresponding list from PC2 and
"nbtstat -c" should display something like

Name Type Host Address Life [sec]
------------------------------------------------------------
MARTINU <20> UNIQUE 192.168.0.6 595
MARTINU <00> UNIQUE 192.168.0.6 595
MARTIN-MESH <20> UNIQUE 192.168.0.2 525
MARTIN-MESH <00> UNIQUE 192.168.0.2 422

where MARTINU and MARTIN-MESH are the other two PCs on my network.