W7 laptop cannot see other PCs in Network

I've been trying to figure this out forever and I have to admit defeat

I've got a fairly big network in my house, 4 PCs & 3 laptops. We have LAN & WAN. I also have a firewall which made things complicated when we were adding the 2 laptops catching the wireless. I've managed to have all the machines hooked up via Ethernet to recognize each other despite 2 of them running XP & the other 2 running W7. One of the wireless laptops is a Macbook, so I don't care about that one lol, but I do care about the laptop running W7. For the life of me, I cannot get the stupid thing to recognize the rest of the machines in the network. My Ethernet machines do not see it either. I have set everything identical in network properties but nothing (including "WORKGROUP" glitch). I cannot even get it to talk to our network printer even though I've installed the drivers for it on the laptop.

Someone who's a networking genius please help? Lol. Let me know if further info is needed and I will gladly post.Thanks!

 

Can the W7 laptop access the internet? What version of W7 is it? What firewall device are you using?

Can you describe the setup? i.e. ISP - modem - crossover cable - firewall - ethernet - switch - ethernet to 4 PC's and also ethernet connected to wireless router. That's how I envision it.

 

Yes, I get access to the internet. Network properties says I'm part of the network. No problems there and I get good connection speeds. It's W7 32-bit Home Premium. Using a Nokia firewall but I'm not sure which one it is. I'll have to check that and get back to you.

Pretty much the setup you described plus addition: I've got 2 hubs upstairs where 3 of the wired machines are. One hub is in my room, connects the network printer and my PC. The other hub provides connection to the one wired laptop, which is recognized just fine by the 4 wired PCs. & Yes, wireless router's got the ethernet plugged in.

EDIT: I also have my PS3 hooked up to the network via Ethernet. It is also recognized by all wired PC's.

 

Just had a thread here recently with somewhat similar symptoms - the fix turned out to be the creation of a new network, instead of trying to add machines to an existing network.

http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=227969

The possibility exists that there may be something as simple as a network naming convention conflict between XP and W7.

Might be worth a shot.

 

Yeah I had that problem in the beginning when I was trying to get the wired PC's with XP & wired PC's with W7 on them to connect. All I ended up having to do was set in W7 to Work Network & name it WORKGROUP. Voila. All the wired machines see each other just fine. Only one that doesn't is this wireless laptop. I'm going to give a shot at setting up a "Homegroup" in W7 between my PC & the laptop. If that works, then no issue. I can just switch settings when I need to. But if that doesn't work? I'm feeling there's a problem with the wireless set up that I'm just not catching. Shouldn't be since I log into our network just fine on the laptop. Just FYI, I've got the WAN configured with WPA 802 security.

Could it be all these security settings I have? I know it's overkill to have both router & firewall, but my dad's paranoid. Ugh...lol :confused

 

One way to find out: temporarily take the firewall out of the circuit, see if your symptoms change, maybe even trying setting up another temp network from scratch without the firewall. Router protection should suffice while you're troubleshooting.

 

Another variable to eliminate for testing, try taking the laptop to a ethernet cable and plug it in. Are you using DHCP or static IP's? If you are using static then you'll need to assign a temp IP in the same range as the main network. Does that let the laptop and the other computers now share? Then you would be right, something in the wireless router or the laptop's security settings or wireless configuration is blocking access.

I had this problem in Vista. Luckily for me, I didn't care that much. I hated Vista and that Vista laptop and it did me the favor of dying right at the one year mark even though I barely used it. Was happy to turn it over to an IT school and them have at and dissect it!!

AHHH, venting feels good. I think you are going to find the settings related to the wireless in some way.

 

Ah...I'll have to ask permission to do that :-D This may not be possible unless I run the idea by the Big Kahuna and he approves.

All my IPs are static. Set in a specific range. I plugged an ethernet in it before, but haven't done so since. I'll try that out since I can do that pretty easily. Still have to try setting up a homegroup between my PC & the laptop. Honestly? I triple checked network settings since the other W7 PC is the same OS as the laptop. I'm sure it has something to do with the router, but I've got a feeling that the firewall is somehow in the way as well. Lol glad I could help you vent! The only other thing I haven't tried yet is to manually add my laptop's IP to Comodo firewall I have installed on all PC's, but it doesn't add up. Still worth a shot I guess =/ I'll let you all know if the homegroup thing works out.

 

I'm not great at configuring wireless on a network, I had to IM my firewall management friends to confirm my setup. Annoying, it was at least the 6th wireless router I had configured at one of our offices and I had a really dumb error in it with the IP ranges.

With that disclaimer, i just wanted to point out that when I set this up on my all static network, the main network has one range of IP's, the wireless side has a different set of IP's. That office I just mentioned has 10.0.92.X on the network and 10.0.94.X on the wireless side. If I want to test a device from wireless to wired network I need to fix the ip or it won't work.

Just triple checking that you understood what I meant by that before. I'm sure at this point you know every IP for every system by heart in your sleep and wouldn't make my kind of mistake.

 

Sorry for not replying sooner. I've been busy. And now with the Blizzard that hit NYC and the lack of response for cleanup lol... And yes...sadly lmao I have all the IPs committed to memory. I'm going to check the IP ranges again for wireless. Either it's not sitting right in the router settings or in the firewall settings. Since I can access the internet and can't see the other computers, I feel like it's the firewall. We do have a new one but I don't understand why it hasn't been set up yet. Will keep working on it and report any update!

 

As you have set static IPs, presumably they are all on the same subnet. Have you tried pinging one of the other machines? (Open command prompt, type "ping 192.168.x.x").

I know this seems really basic, and you've probably already tried it. Just it's not been mentioned and want to make sure that the machines can communicate on this basic level.

 

Yes I have to no avail All bytes are lost. I don't even get the pop ups on Comodo Firewall, which I usually get when pinged by the ethernet wired machines. The ethernet machines can communicate with each other through pings. Heck...I can even ping my PS3 without a problem. I tested that out for giggles. Could be the latest updates I did for the PS3 since now I can also access Windows Media Player on the W7 PCs. I digress...

I have rechecked everything but settings in the hardware firewall (since dear old dad is being uncooperative), and everything pans out ok...infuriatingly enough lol. I would have been happy if some small number was off. I have been thinking that perhaps it's the operating system itself that is the culprit. It took me and my dad quite a while to smooth out the quirks connecting the W7 and XP machines together on the network. I did a little googling, and I've found a lot of similar if not identical cases to mine on Microsoft's forums. From what I've seen, these cases are unresolved...The OP just stops replying or the tech expert runs out of ideas. I found it interesting that there seem to be a lot of complaints with connecting wireless W7 machines to a network. If I can't get my ethernet PC and the laptop to see each other by setting up a temporary home network I think it's safe to blame the operating system.

 

OK, and you mentioned that you were going to try plugging this laptop in with an ethernet cable - that would be the next thing I would try. Have you done this yet?

 

Yes. I did this a while ago too with no trouble. When plugged in, the laptop connects and works fine. It sees all other machines. I can magically ping back and forth. That's why I thought something was wrong in router/firewall settings for the WAN.

I got a genius idea while sitting there frustrated again. Actually I feel downright STUPID for not thinking of this sooner. I mentioned that there's another laptop but it's hooked up via ethernet. I'm going to take it off and put it on the wireless network. Mind you it's an older Toshiba and it runs XP. I figure that I'll narrow down the problem based on whether or not it can successfully "see" the rest of the network. I will report the result but first I have to wait for my dad to get home since it's his laptop lol.

 

Yep, that's a good idea - if you can't then you know it is not specific to that machine. Let us know how you get on.

 

I'm curious about what the XP machine will do on the wireless. I'm not proficient enough in Windows7 yet but i do know it has some annoying security settings that I didn't encounter before.

Part of what I was getting at is that if you have the wireless setup the same as mine, with the devices attached via wireless in a different IP range as the wired, Windows7 is not going to consider it one network. If they are all in the same range then the wireless is in a different position that what i'm envisioning.