NTFS won't work with network???

I have a new hp laptop pavilion zx5060 with winxp and a NTFS file system. Suddenly I am unable to access the printer and desktop pc on my home msft broadband wireless network from the laptop. I still have wireless internet access to both on the network and the desktop (win98se) has no trouble accessing my laptop(winXP) files. MSFT support claims its because my laptop must have been switched to NTFS file system. However-I'm not sure if my laptop didn't come with NTFS. If that is true, why was I able to share before? I'm in no hurry to format and reinstall xp. Anyone have any other solutions to this prob???? help!

 

It's not like your laptop would spontaneously and mysteriously change filesystems without you knowing about it. How MS support can say that how different PCs on a network store their files affects how they communicate with eachother via TCP/IP across a network is a a bigger mystery. Something else must have happened. Your HP machine shipped with XP likely came NTFS out of the box. I would have to look at other possibilities before I did any reformatting and OS reinstallation-- that MS tech support advice just doesn't fly.

 

You were talking to an idiot tech. Were they in India?

Can you expand on what errors you are getting?

 

whew, I'm glad you all agree with me, for a company with $XXXXXXXX they sure have lousy support, (the phone connection was so bad and they hardly spoke english) the error I get when trying to open the C drive on the desktop is..."\\desktop is not accessible. You might not have permission to use this network resource. Contact the administrator of this server to find out if you have access permissions. The semaphore timeout period has expired."

when I try to access the printer it just says its not connected to the network. I still think its somewhere in my xp secruity settings. Any clues?

 

Don't blame MS for thier losuy support.

MS outsources most of their OS support to the company I work for.

They decided a while back that its a good idea to have people in India.

Its all been downhill from there.

I know, I've talked to them.

A lot.

The only reason I still am employed is because India can't handle the job.



Who knows if that will change.

Anyway...

Get the IP address of your desktop, and then go to your laptop and type in the run box (start, run):

\\ip


Click OK.
Where IP is the numeric IP address of the desktop.

Results?

 

I got "The network path was not found" error, blah. I get the same kind of message trying to access the printer. I reset all my sharing folders, reinstalled my network adapter. The old desktop win98 can still access the xp laptop no problem, and internet access is still fine between them.

 

Can the laptop ping the desktop?

Try it by name an dby IP address.

If it doesn't work, give the error message.

The most common are:

Request Timed Out

Destination Host Unreachable

 

I have a msft mn700 wireless base station. I tried going to "run" in the laptop and typed //desktopipaddress and got nothing. Is that how you ping the desktop?

 

No.

At a cmd.exe prompt:

Ping "ip address of desktop"

Hit enter.

Minus the quotes of course.

Do the same for the computer name.

 

I connects just long enough to send out 3 lines, then closes.

 

Ok, this is why I said from a cmd.exe prompt

Don't do it from Start, run.

Open up cmd.exe (command prompt) and do it from there.

 

this sad...sort of, it took me, (a florist) to figure out what 6 techs at msft and hp couldn't figure out. I uninstalled my norton systemworks and antivirus on the desktop win98 machine....fixed 100%! Somehow it was blocking my access from the xp laptop to the desktop shared files and printer. Hope I don't get a virus now!!! hope others with this prob read this.