ok adryn spill the beans

...

 

Ok, what specifically is the problem?


XP Home and XP Pro have the same code, are are the same OS, except one is dumbed down.


I have done this at home once, and at work countless times.


You can successfully peer to peer network XP Home with Pro or with other OSes as well.


Maybe we are not talking the same thing?


What specific issue are you seeing?

Errors?

 

I will say this.


I've seen issues with XP Home and the Guest account not functioning properly.


This does sometimes cause networking headaches, but I've find my way around/through it most the time.

 

this is the deal.

MY BOX=XP PRO
WIFES BOS=XP HOME

both have user accounts with the SAME NAME and SAME PASSWORD. Basically I can UNC to my box from hers, but not the other way around.. and I'm moving this to networking.

 

Ok


What error do you get when you \\unc and \\ip ?

 

gives me login box.. can't login.. that's it.

I can even login on my box under her account and try to unc. won't let me..

 

Ok, greyed out username and a password prompt?

 

negative..standard NT to NT windows login prompt

 

Did you password protect her Guest account?

Or disable it?

 

guest account is disabled.. first thing I do is make sure that it is.. don't need guest account. I disable it on all the NT boxes at work and never have any issues so long as I have the user name and password to the accounts on the boxes.

 

Ok. XP Home uses the Guest account to authenticate across the network.


Thats one of the major downsides to Simple File Sharing.


Does it work if you enable it?

 

good christ..you're kidding me.. well, I'll have to try that out when she gets home then. She's at her mom's house 3 hours away.
why the frig would MS do that..sons of bitches..

 

Also, you can have the Guest accounr disabled locally, you just dont want it disabled across the network.


Humor me.



Run the Small Home?Office setup wizard on her computer and choose this option.







Dont bridge anything, and turn off internet connection firewall after.


Still have a problem?

 

Probably to make it more like 9x.



Succeeded, didn't they




Let me know if it doesn't work out, I am happy to help in anyway I can.

 

I'll let you know when I have access to her laptop next week..

*smacks forhead...stupid ms*

 

er, wrong info.

Still looking on an article to confirm this.

 

Here ya go:



uksecurityonline.com/husdg/windowsxp/tightenfile.htm

(Add a www, formatting breaks the link)

 

The funny part is when you think that MS paid people to think up "Simple File Sharing" (a.k.a., "Security Failure System"), paid people to retro-code XP Pro into XP Home, and then pays people to support their OS's that don't work together.

If OS/2 is "half an OS", is XP Home: XP/2?

I'm telling ya, XP Home is a bootloader, DOS, IE 6, WMP, and that's it. Oh, well, notepad.exe. MS's best contribution to the computing world.

 

You confuse me sometimes


XP Home is XP Pro with some features disabled.



While I think Simple File Sharing is stupid and a security risk, so was the entire 9X line of Oses (read: no security, wide open sharing by default). Enabling the Guest account as your primary account for Network Access has nothing to do with any type of retro code of XP Pro to XP Home, especially when you consider the fact that XP Pro has the same feature, except you can turn it off. Its even enabled by default. Putting Pro on a domain turns it off automatically.


Want to know what happens when a n00b user networks for the first time and gets a user/pass across the netowk?


They freak, and call MS.

Don't fool yourself, tech support costs the company more than it costs the user. The 35 dollar per incident charge that you face after your 2 incident warranty plan and FREE unlimited setup warranty doesnt even come close to paying the wages of the tech most of the time. It doesn't even pay for the overhead either. Well, it is now that everything is going to India, but we'll save that for a different rant. MS probably saved themselves a gigantic headache by coming up with Simple File Sharing. Its want people want: ease of use. Most non business customers who call MS have no desire to learn why the problem exists, or what they did wrong, or how to use 'insert random feature here', they just want it done for them. Most power users don't call MS.

The way they see it:

Wide open network access without hassles. Simple File Sharing. Its whats for dinner.

Lets face it folks. Secure features in an OS are not ready for the vast majority of non computer savvy people. Non computer savvy people do not demand a secure OS. They don't understand it. User friendly more often than not equates to loss in features or security. There has to be a loss, one way or another. While I don't agree, I am also a power user and understand the OS.

They do work together. I know this, I've done it. People on this board have done it. People on other boards have done it. People where I work have done it (more times than can be counted). If everything in this world worked perfectly the first time, then there would be no tech support jobs to go around. Issues come up. Software is not perfect.


"There IS such thing as an intermittant software error"

So is Pro, if you break it down to its base features without anything installed.

With the exception of the fact that no, there is no DOS.

We could get into the features you left out, but whats the point?


XP Home = XP Pro with some features disabled.

What retro coding you feel has taken place, I've no idea.

They are the same code. The files are the same version. They are the same size.


Once again, please stop with the hijacking of threads. All its going to do is turn into a flame fest or argument that has nothing to do with the original post. You started out great, then quickly devolved to XP Home vs. Pro again like my tweak thread.

Kodo was so nice to make a thread specifically for the issue of networking XP Home because people were walking all over my tweak thread.

Maybe you should make a why XP Home sucks thread in Software I'd be honored to debate it with you.

EDIT: I noticed Kodo's title and first post left this wide open.....

Bad Kodo!

 

you guys are more than welcome to use this thread to debate.. infact, I must say that I agree with Adryn on most accounts except for the savvy computer user and for those who understand security, the OS's do not play together well. No one in their left mind would enable the guest account for simple sake of allowing bi-directional network access.
I wasn't happy when my wife told me that it was XP Home that she got becuase I knew I was going to have a problem.

 

Fair enough

 

funny this should come up, actually, because ive got almost the same problem here.. but i think in my case its more to do with NetBIOS names going doo-lally over the network.. but anyway, ill be watching this one

Oh yes, and my .02 on Xp Home: It really irritates me because they seem to put lots of frilly diagrams all over things (which they do in pro as well... i have to admit) BUT in comparison with pro, there is no way to get more advanced than the frilly diagrams.

one case in which this is true, is user accounts. true, you can get to userpasswords2 but thats nothing in comparison with Local Users and Groups and all the other stuff you get in the MMC module. You dont even have Group Policy editor! Ach!

And it also doesnt have IIS at all, and if you try to FORCE it to install it, it rarley works, if ever, which is really quite irriating for me, being a web developer!

 

Hey Goldfish,


When you say its a netbios issue, do you mean you can only access it by IP?


I may have a solution for you, if so.

 

If I had a dollar for every novice computer user that gets hold of Pro and breaks their system with these features, I'd be retiring.


I am actually glad these are not in XP Home.

As I said before, XP Home is not a power user's OS.

As for IIS, XP Home is insecure as it is, do you really want a home user using IIS to make it worse?

There is a price difference between Home and Pro.

That price buys you more features. Go figure

 

umm, now im confused! right, first post first:

Yes, i can only access it with IP, but not the computer name.

And second, yeah, i guess its a bit of a saftey net for those people who dont use their computers to the limit much, but unfortunatley, Im not one of them!

In that case, is there any way to "upgrade" to Pro? mind you, even if there was, i doubt it would be clean by any stretch of the imagination. *sighs* i guess ill just have to stick with Home on this machine from now on then...

 

Goldfish, do me a favor.


Do an ipconfig /all from a cmd prompt from both your machines, or how ever many you have.


I need the Node Type information for each computer.

Then I'll show you how to fix this, I hope

 

okay my PC is "unknown" and the other is...

also unknown

hope you can help cause this has been bugging me for ages

 

Sure. Are they both XP?

I need to know before I answer

 

Locate this key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\NetBT\Parameters

Add a new DWORD value. Name it NodeType.

Set the value to 2.

Reboot.

Your Node type should be Peer to Peer now.

Rinse and repeat for other XP machines.

Are all machines XP?

 

yep, both machines are XP, and i made a .reg file to do it for me on the other machine.. looks promising! Ill report back and see what happens

 

Let me know!

 

okay, after an initial brain fart where i forgot the "parameters" bit, i got it going and the node type has now changed to Peer-to-Peer but unfortunatley host-names still dont work

 

Doh...


Ok, check this out:




Does yours match?


This is under advanced in TCP/IP Properties.

 

LOL, I broke my own network trying stuff out to help you

 

Yep, on all accounts they match.

LOL sorry, didnt mean to be a pain!

 

Not at all.


I'm just wondering what I did.


Incidently, my network is doing the exact same thing as yours now.


And it was working with these same settings not 20 minutes ago, LOL.



Hmmmm....

 

Well I fixed it. It doesn't make sense though.


I disabled netbios testing something.

Then set it back to default.

Netbios remained broken.


Reboot, same thing.

Set Nodetype to 2 as you did.

Reboot.

Same problem.

Removed Nodetype key.

Reboot.

Now it works...


Figure that one out.


Try it if you like.

May want to try different node settings as well.


The KB article 314053 goes through it.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;314053

This srticle didnt help me, but check it out.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;310570

BTW, all my machiens are Pro.

 

i had a funny thing happen to my little network of 4 feet. had two computers one xp pro, second xp home sharing a dial up connection via cross-over cable. hook up cable modem through usb and loose the whole network and ofcourse the ability to share the connection lol. trying running the wizards to setup another network and it doesn't work. neither computer sees the other.

 

I don't like dumbed-down software. I especially don't like dumbed-down software whose sole purpose is to justify the higher price of the not-dumbed-down version.

 

The sad thing is is you can convert XP Home to Pro I believe, I've only heard of this being done on NT, ie. converting NT workstation -> Server (is that it?), or vice versa, kinda sad erally, same OS just dumbed down

 

Okay, when ive got netbios disabled, i get an error cannot connect to network or somthing like that, but if its on default, i get this:

 

Well...

Im just about to give in. Im gonna research it more today at work.


Is it still broken in SafeMode w/ Networking?

 

Wait, hold on.


No network provider accepted the given path means the workstation or server service is generally not running on one of the computers.


What are the results of that?

 

Both running Workstation and Server. Tried taking off software firewall, to no avail.

The other computer works fine with this, i.e. it can connect to my computer fine through name, but mine cant.

I wouldnt worry too much though, they are both static IPs and ive just made a shortcut to the IP.

 

I like these debates, one of the Major reasons I'm here. We only learn by absorbing disagreement

Oooops sorry, wrong post

 

Is TCP/IP Netbios Helper service started Goldfish?

 

It wasnt running, but starting it up made no effect I'll try it after a restart

 

any luck?

It should be an automatic startup type and running.

Netbios setting should be set to default.

While you are at it, you may want to try also removing the Nodetype values you added.