I've got 2 PCs, both WinXP SP2, behind a cable router, which is also the DHCP server. Used to share local printers and files via Windows Workgroup (persistant drives). This network ran fine for at least several months. I primarily use one of the PCs (system # 2) and have never experienced a local network problem; I recently went to system #1 and tried to copy files from the Z drive (persistant drive connected to a share on system #2, which worked fine a while back), but the network drive had died; when I tried to get it restarted (Net Use Z: \\...), it failed with an error "Windows cannot find the network path ..."). After a great deal of trouble shooting I have found the following. 1 Neither system has any problems with the internet, it is merely a MS Windows network issue. 2 The Windows network trouble shooter, on both systems, indicates that the system name "MAY" (I love thethe "may") be in use by another system. 3 System #2 has no problems using any of the shared resources on system #1. 4 System #1 cannot even see system #2 (Win Net only). 5 Windows network trouble shhoter, on both systems, fails to ping the DNS servers, DHCP server, and even the local loopback. 6 Command line pings have no problem accessing anything, local and remote. 7 I have changed, on both systems, their names and workgroup names to no avail. I think I've got something like a bad registry entry (probably on system # 1), but for the life of me I can't find what the problem really is. Any help would be appreciated.

have you shut down your firewall/ics service on system 2 and tried it?? go to control panel, administrative tools, and then services the service will be Windows Firewall/ICS right click and stop it, and then try it...have you installed any new software on system 2, as far as a third party firewall...i have never used windows troulbeshooter, but if it says you can't ping dns, dhcp then you should not be surfing so i think that is wrong, can you ping from system 1 (Start>run> cmd (enter) ping systemname) to system 2?? if you cant ping by name can you ping by IP? Complete Computer Service Inc. NW Indiana

I've got ZoneAlarm running on both systems, and have tried shutting them down to see if they were a part of the problem, but they weren't. Neither system has a problem with IP, (except (and unless Windows Networking uses IP) as far as the Windows troubleshooting, after pulling my hair out on this one, as a last gasp fired up "Help" and used the internal troubleshooting guide to see if I missed anything, ran the diags, and discovered that Windows cannot ping anything, even the loopback; which is a stunner, since I'm able to go anywhere localy and on Internet. MySQL has no problems using TCP/IP to see the other system (both ways). Because of all this I think its something either very basic I've overlooked, or completely off-the-wall (eg, registry, corrupted file, etc). I really don't want to have to re-install the O/S and all apps, just to get a share to work in a particular direction; I can always create some high level sahres on system # 1, give full access to local, and do what I want from system # 2. It's just a little wierd, and would love to know what the problem actually is. But thanks for the effort.