View Full Version : Flakey home network - Vista
I'm getting really pissed off with my network... i'm no stranger to flakey microsoft network crap...
To sum it up... my notebook seems to flip a coin on whether it wants to play ball or not.. a third of the time it works perfectly, another 3rd it sees my other PCs but refuses to connect and a 3rd it sees nothing.
I have all the necessary permissions set... often a reboot fixes the issue only to drop when it feels like it. I can always see my router from all PCs and the network says it is connected to be the local and internet.
The only thing i can think to do is set static IPs.
As for why MS have such crappy network systems is beyond me! :no:
And words of wisdom??
A bit more info on your entire setup would be useful. I've been doing networking for over 17 years and anything Microsoft is a piece of piss compared to some of the other stuff I've had to deal with in my time.
PS - static IPs in a small network aren't such a bad idea. Oh, and uninstall the QOS service from your network connection too - it's useless.
hmmm what can i add....
my laptop is Vista32 Business and is the one that is tempermental. My desktop in Vista64 and i believe is stable... i also have 2 laptops on XP that never have an issue.
My desktop is wired, all laptops are wifi g, WPA pre shared key security (WPA TKIP)... i do have MS firewall enabled. Network descovery is on, File sharing is on, Public file sharing is on, i have custom folders shared.
Not sure what else to add. Thanks mate.
I have a sitecom MiMo XR router.
I've exprienced similar problems in the past with small windows networks, even on all XP systems. I've static IP'd my network and use the c$ share when I want to navagate other PC's.
hostname\c$ tend to be flakey most of the time whereas IP\c$ works everytime for me and with the c$ share there is no need to set permissions, I'd give that a try.
Maybe also check your DHCP server client lease time.
cool.. yeah i remember this old trick now... i'll set it up with static ip and use ip addresses.
DHCP lease is not the problem..
Cheers mate..
Yeah, I've had to do that with my family's home network too. For some reason using dynamic IPs for laptops etc just made 'em tempremental when trying to find each other.
To be honest, even with static IP's I've still had problems, I'm not too sure but isnt it the WINS service that translates PC names to IP's? To me it seems that the problems arise from not knowing IP addresses as typing in the IP seems to work fine for me, don't know if Vista has a version of the lmhosts file but if static IP's are used you could put some lines into it so machine names are mapped to IP's (Not sure if lmhosts file works on LAN IP's but it should I think) that may simplify the browsing procedure then.
Alternativly I could just be talking complete bollox, in which case kindly disregard above statements.
WINS (a Microsoft invention) translates IPs to NetBIOS names - it's pretty much defunct now, in favour of DNS. Don't bother with WINS at all - you don't need it.
DNS (a worldwide standard) translates IPs to domain names - that's more important, since it's pretty crucial to how the internet works. Even so, you don't need a DNS server or anything on your home net, since it's a private network (your router is the one that's participating in the internet's DNS hierarchym not your PCs).
LMHOSTS - ignore - that's for WINS.
HOSTS - that's for DNS. Sooo .. you could add your PC's domain names and IPs into the hosts file if you want to, but I prefer to simply type IPs. Cos it's l337.
When you open 'Network' and see all the shares on different PC's, I.E \\Laptop\music what handles the broadcasting of computer names to local PC's?
example
PC1 & PC2 are on and connected to router,
LT1 powers up and is assigned an IP
how does PC1 & PC2 know what IP LT1 is on? ... Does LT1 send a broadcast to all PC's with it's information or does the router handle it?
Just curious?
Nevermind, hope you get it sorted Tommy
.... well my present issue is i cant get the fecking backslash button working, keyboard layout is set wrong and i havent found the right version yet! :rant:
When you open 'Network' and see all the shares on different PC's, I.E \\Laptop\music what handles the broadcasting of computer names to local PC's?
example
PC1 & PC2 are on and connected to router,
LT1 powers up and is assigned an IP
how does PC1 & PC2 know what IP LT1 is on? ... Does LT1 send a broadcast to all PC's with it's information or does the router handle it?
Just curious?
Running Wireshark over a home network yesterday, it looked to me like each PC on the network broadcasts stating the services it can provide - file sharing, printer sharing etc.
But that's based on twenty minutes playing with it, not any actual formal knowledge like wot epoch got.
Well i've resolved all my networking issues. For anyone interested....
It was connected to my user accounts on my Vista PCs. Not really sure why, never had such issues on previous versions of Windows.
But by simply creating identical admin accounts on both Vista machines, purely for network access, I now have a network that responds as expected 100% of the time.
:)
Yeah, I had that problem myself a few weeks ago - it's bizarre, it doesn't seem to allow you to specify a user account from another PC in the same way that Vista dose.
Dose... is that even how you spell it? It looks funny. I've been up too long today already and it's not even 5pm. Dose just looks wrong.
Also, and I meant to crack this quality funny out months ago, - if you have a flakey home network, wash your CAT5 in head n shoulders :p
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