I've been going insane trying to figure out what is going on here. I have a home network with three Windows XP Pro computers, all connected via a smc router. They are each assigned an IP and can connect to the internet no problem. Two of the computers can each see each other via ping/net view, but neither of them can see the third computer: if I ping either the name or ip, I get request timed out. If I try to browse to it, I get "might not have permission to use this network resource ... the network path was not found." The third computer can ping and browse to the first two computers no problem. It has no firewalls installed, or other similar types of software (antivirus, etc, all disabled). It's running Windows XP Pro SP2. It was running SP1, but I just updated to SP2 to try and resolve the issue, but no luck. I've run the network connection wizard several times on all three computers, trying workgroup and computer name changes, but with no luck. Plus it seems like the workgroup name should have nothing to do with being able to ping the computer, since I could add a computer to the network from a different workgroup, and still ping it. I've tried from both wireless and wired connections and the second machine always sees the first but never sees the third. Ipconfig for all three are basically the same (the first two computers have unknown node type, while the third has hybrid -- this shouldn't really make a difference, I don't think). They all have the same 4 connection items: TCP/IP, QoS, Client for MS, & File & Printer sharing. Also, Enable NetBIOS over TCP/IP is on. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated! Thanks to all! -Stephen

Are you positive that the Windows Firewall is not turned on by default in SP2?

If you cannot ping the third machine I would guess the culprit might be either the cable or the NIC. It may be that the transmit lines are okay but not the receive. (On the other hand, I have my own thread going with a not too dissimilar problem and I have no simple solution as yet. Sometimes I think networking is more voodoo than science. For every dozen LANS that work by the book there is one that doesn't.)

Yeah I'm virtually positive there are no firewalls running - I've gone into the windows firewall settings and made sure it's off, and then I also went through all the advanced options and disabled anything else, just in case. I don't think there is anything else that could be acting as a firewall -- is there anyway to check? Some kind of utility? It sure seems like a firewall thing. The trouble computer is a notebook, and I've tried connecting wirelessly, and wired, using two different cable to two different ports on the router. I've also tried a direct cable connection between the trouble computer and a nic on one of the good ones. No luck. The weird thing is if I ping the computername, the ip address resolves, but then I get request times out. And if I change the ip address on the trouble machine, when I try to ping it again, the new address resolves, but again request times out. Also, if I browse the workgroup from another computer, I can see the trouble computer there, but if I try to open it, I get that "might not have permission to use this network resource ... the network path was not found" message.