File & Printer Sharing Not Functioning Via Wireless

I have a home office network consisting of 7 computers, 6 of which run
Wiudows XP Pro SP2. The other one is Windows Vista Ultimate (the machine I
am on now). It's patched daily automatically by our friends at Microsoft.

I use Bright House/RoadRunner for my cable modem ISP.

File and print sharing is set up so that all computers can print to and
share with two other machines. The router I was using before moving to
wireless was a LinkSys BEFSR81, firmware revision 2.51.1 It was a perfectly
functioning network for what I wanted to do. Then I moved to wireless.

The changes:

I installed a LinkSys WRT54GS, version 6.0, with firmware revision 1.52.0.
I have two Dell Latitude laptops with built-in wireless capability. On all
other machines I installed LinkSys PCI wireless adapters, model WMP54GS
(with SpeedBooster).

The setup worked nicely as far as throughput and reliability were concerned.
I had a problem with dropped connections on the router, but I found the
cause and eradicated the problem (it was being caused by one of the laptops
going into sleep mode while connected to the network -- why it screwed with
the router itself I don't know, just that it did).

In the network neighborhood on the XP machines they could all see other, and
all computers showed up on the Vista network map as being in the same
network.

WPA-Personal with TKIP encryption is the protection scheme. Again, no
problems with that.

I made sure all of the adapters were operating in infrastructure mode
instead of ad-hoc.

I soon discovered that NONE of the machines could communicate with each
other in terms of file and printer sharing. The exception is a Brother
MFC-665CW printer/fax with wireless support. As long as the Brother control
center software is installed on each machine, they can print to it. They
cannot, however, install via Network Neighborhood or through the Windows
printer setup in the control panel. It is only through the software they
are able to do so.

After spending 24 hours researching the problem on the 'Net, I finally
decided to disable wireless on a few workstations and hook them up again via
CAT-5 only. The WRT54GS still would not allow the machines to share. At
last, I removed the WRT54GS and reinstalled the BEFSR81. Voila, I had file
and printer sharing back, even with the Vista machine.

I believe I have isolated the problem to the WRT54GS OR perhaps the setup of
the individual wireless adapters. On the laptops the wireless worked out of
the box -- all I had to do was enter the security information. When I
installed the wireless adapters for the PCs, I did nothing out of the
ordinary in setup. Again, general connectivity to the router and to the
Internet was smooth as silk. But internally, the machines will not transact
with each other.

Getting back to the wireless router (WRTG54GS), I will conclude by saying
that it shipped with the most current firmware (according to the LinkSys
Website) and I have made absolutely no changes to the routers optional
settings, except, of course, to enable the WPA-Personal security and to
enable SSID broadcasts.

There it is. I have to make this work via wireless, or I have to take all
this stuff back to Office Depot for a return. Please help if you can.

Thank you.

"The Rejuvenated Techie" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:0F4FFC7F-630C-4E1C-AF51-(E-Mail Removed)...
>I have a home office network consisting of 7 computers, 6 of which run
> Wiudows XP Pro SP2. The other one is Windows Vista Ultimate (the machine
> I
> am on now). It's patched daily automatically by our friends at Microsoft.
>
> I use Bright House/RoadRunner for my cable modem ISP.
>
> File and print sharing is set up so that all computers can print to and
> share with two other machines. The router I was using before moving to
> wireless was a LinkSys BEFSR81, firmware revision 2.51.1 It was a
> perfectly
> functioning network for what I wanted to do. Then I moved to wireless.
>
> The changes:
>
> I installed a LinkSys WRT54GS, version 6.0, with firmware revision 1.52.0.
> I have two Dell Latitude laptops with built-in wireless capability. On
> all
> other machines I installed LinkSys PCI wireless adapters, model WMP54GS
> (with SpeedBooster).
>
> The setup worked nicely as far as throughput and reliability were
> concerned.
> I had a problem with dropped connections on the router, but I found the
> cause and eradicated the problem (it was being caused by one of the
> laptops
> going into sleep mode while connected to the network -- why it screwed
> with
> the router itself I don't know, just that it did).
>
> In the network neighborhood on the XP machines they could all see other,
> and
> all computers showed up on the Vista network map as being in the same
> network.
>
> WPA-Personal with TKIP encryption is the protection scheme. Again, no
> problems with that.
>
> I made sure all of the adapters were operating in infrastructure mode
> instead of ad-hoc.
>
> I soon discovered that NONE of the machines could communicate with each
> other in terms of file and printer sharing. The exception is a Brother
> MFC-665CW printer/fax with wireless support. As long as the Brother
> control
> center software is installed on each machine, they can print to it. They
> cannot, however, install via Network Neighborhood or through the Windows
> printer setup in the control panel. It is only through the software they
> are able to do so.
>
> After spending 24 hours researching the problem on the 'Net, I finally
> decided to disable wireless on a few workstations and hook them up again
> via
> CAT-5 only. The WRT54GS still would not allow the machines to share. At
> last, I removed the WRT54GS and reinstalled the BEFSR81. Voila, I had
> file
> and printer sharing back, even with the Vista machine.
>
> I believe I have isolated the problem to the WRT54GS OR perhaps the setup
> of
> the individual wireless adapters. On the laptops the wireless worked out
> of
> the box -- all I had to do was enter the security information. When I
> installed the wireless adapters for the PCs, I did nothing out of the
> ordinary in setup. Again, general connectivity to the router and to the
> Internet was smooth as silk. But internally, the machines will not
> transact
> with each other.
>
> Getting back to the wireless router (WRTG54GS), I will conclude by saying
> that it shipped with the most current firmware (according to the LinkSys
> Website) and I have made absolutely no changes to the routers optional
> settings, except, of course, to enable the WPA-Personal security and to
> enable SSID broadcasts.
>
> There it is. I have to make this work via wireless, or I have to take all
> this stuff back to Office Depot for a return. Please help if you can.
>
> Thank you.
>

Some wireless routers have a configurable that allows you to block wireless
clients from seeing one another or not depending on if that is enabled or
disabled. My old Buffalo WBR-G54 had that function. That would be the first
place to look IMO. Also, make sure the Windows Firewall on each PC is
configured to allow File & Print Sharing.

--

Al Jarvi (MS-MVP Windows Networking)

Please post *ALL* questions and replies to the news group for the
mutual benefit of all of us...
The MS-MVP Program - http://mvp.support.microsoft.com
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no
rights...

"Sooner Al [MVP]" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
> Some wireless routers have a configurable that allows you to block
> wireless clients from seeing one another or not depending on if that is
> enabled or disabled. My old Buffalo WBR-G54 had that function. That would
> be the first place to look IMO. Also, make sure the Windows Firewall on
> each PC is configured to allow File & Print Sharing.

The LinkSys router uses MAC filtering for the first thing you mentioned, and
I have that disabled.

All machines have the Windows Firewall disabled. We use Norton and McAfee
products, and I have turned all of those off and it makes no difference.

Again, if I replace the wireless router with the wired router, I get my file
and print sharing back. This is with no changes to any of the PCs. I don't
think this is a Microsoft issue -- it's clearly a LinkSys issue. I just
thought I'd throw it out here in case anyone ever ran into anything like
this with this particular router.

One interesting thing: The XP machines can access shares on the Vista
machine, but they can't access each other, and Vista cannot access them.
Good stuff.

"Jim" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
> Can you ping all computers from each other? Mine can.
>
> By the way, I found that I had less difficulty in setting this up when I
> opened a cmd window and used the net commands.

I have a ping problem on this network when the LinkSys WRT54GS (wireless) is
installed. When the BEFSR81 (not wireless) is installed, there are no
problems at all. File sharing between XP machines just does not work at all
with the wireless router, either between wired or wireless nodes. Something
is broken in either the design or the firmware.