Can't see XP Machine in Windows 7

I am absolutely frustrated by this problem. No matter what I try I can see my Windows 7 machine in XP but can not even SEE my xp machine in Windows 7. I have the network Computer names the same on both computers "Workgroup". I have ALL firewalls completely turned off. I have all network sharing settings in the sharing center set correctly. The windows 7 machine just is not finding the computer. I am using a wireless network. I have a shared folder on the XP machine. I have ran the Network setup wizard on the XP machine that did absolutely nothing for it. I am able to see my XP machine from other XP machines with no problems and access the shared folder. I have figured out that it WILL get access to my shared folder in Windows 7 IF I manually type the IP number of the XP machine in the network explorer. It's just like Windows 7 is not able to read the name of my XP machine. It's driving me crazy!!

try this fix.
Network Map in Windows Vista does not display computers that are running Windows XP

should work for windows 7 as well.

Thanks for the help.... Unfortunately this did not help. I had also tried this in the past before formatting my XP machine and it did NOT work at that time either. I have been trying to research this from many peoples solutions on the net and my trial and error for the whole time I have used VISTA and Windows seven which NEITHER one will properly see my XP machine.

its either... update your XP to SP3 or install link layer discovery protocol in that xp machine...

http://www.microsoft.com/Downloads/...1D-EE46-481E-BA11-37F485FA34EA&displaylang=en

Check out this thread for some things to check on the xp machine.
Two XP Pro networked computers not visible to each other - Practically Networked Forums

Can you ping the xp by name from the windows 7 computer? If not then its a simple DNS issue.

Thanks again for the help. I really appreciate it!

Can you please show me an example of how to use the PING command in that PC Name format for the command prompt. I am a novice in Networking. Thanks!

In response to "Mercurial" ... I already have SP3 installed and the Link Layer Discovery Protocal installed.

Thanks guys

ping sommand

Jopplehead said:

Thanks again for the help. I really appreciate it!

Can you please show me an example of how to use the PING command in that PC Name format for the command prompt. I am a novice in Networking. Thanks!

In response to "Mercurial" ... I already have SP3 installed and the Link Layer Discovery Protocal installed.

Thanks guys

Click to expand...

Using ping is a piece of cake. At search type cmd and in the cmd box simply type ping and something to ping like google.com it will send 4 packets to google and when they get there they will come back it will look like this. The smaller the numbers in min & max the better your connection is. you can also ping an ip if you know it

Hope this helps

Ken

OK this may help in figuring out what is going on...

I tried to ping my PC name. It was not able to.

I then pinged the IP of the XP machine instead on the PC name... That worked fine.

Now this is interesting...
I THEN RE-tried to ping the PC name of the XP machine and after the first ping using the IP the PC name was pinged! So in other words the windows 7 machine did NOT recognized the XP's PC name until it was pinged by it's correct IP address.

Next I was curious so I went to network in explorer and Nothing had changed. It only showed the local windows 7 machine. So I decided to manually enter my pc name in the address bar example "//PC Name". Now... the PC name appeared in the network list. I clicked it and was able to see my shares on the XP machine. Now... I closed explorer, went back to network and BOOM... NO XP MACHINE!!! In otherwords it had no memory of that pc on the network. So I am seeing that is not able to find the XP machine manually.

Any IDEAS??

ip problem

Jopplehead said:

OK this may help in figuring out what is going on...

I tried to ping my PC name. It was not able to.

I then pinged the IP of the XP machine instead on the PC name... That worked fine.

Now this is interesting...
I THEN RE-tried to ping the PC name of the XP machine and after the first ping using the IP the PC name was pinged! So in other words the windows 7 machine did NOT recognized the XP's PC name until it was pinged by it's correct IP address.

Next I was curious so I went to network in explorer and Nothing had changed. It only showed the local windows 7 machine. So I decided to manually enter my pc name in the address bar example "//PC Name". Now... the PC name appeared in the network list. I clicked it and was able to see my shares on the XP machine. Now... I closed explorer, went back to network and BOOM... NO XP MACHINE!!! In otherwords it had no memory of that pc on the network. So I am seeing that is not able to find the XP machine manually.

Any IDEAS??

Click to expand...

Hi and first let me say welcome.

This is really easy (i like networking) your ip is provided by the isp outside the router and inside by the router since its giving you your inside ip (something like 192.168.1.105) so the router has to translate ip to machine name this is called DNS. once the router has ip=machine it know that when you ask for my pc you mean ip and replies. Every time you reboot the router it looses that unless you put the machines MAC ( description later) address into the routing table. try it. reboot the router and ping its name it wont work untill your ping its ip then it will.

Hope this helps a little there is much more to learn abt networking so keep asking questions I love them

Ken

Thanks much Ken but I respectfully don't think that is the problem. I mean... I CAN ping the PC name on an XP machine that is connect to my other XP machine... No porblems... However... Windows 7 machine will not unless the IP is pinged first. And also the PC does not show in explorer even after a ping in windows 7 machine unless I actually use the IP in the address bar first and then use pc name in the address bar. Then it shows up ONLY for the extent that that browser instance is open. Once I close that Explorer window and open a new one... The PC is GONE from network in explorer

xp in win 7

Jopplehead said:

Thanks much Ken but I respectfully don't think that is the problem. I mean... I CAN ping the PC name on an XP machine that is connect to my other XP machine... No porblems... However... Windows 7 machine will not unless the IP is pinged first. And also the PC does not show in explorer even after a ping in windows 7 machine unless I actually use the IP in the address bar first and then use pc name in the address bar. Then it shows up ONLY for the extent that that browser instance is open. Once I close that Explorer window and open a new one... The PC is GONE from network in explorer

Click to expand...

No problem just responding to ping question if you want to go in a different way win 7 does networking differently than xp. Do you have a home workgroup set up? If so the xp machine is probably not in it. let me know

Ken

Something else I found out on my own because I was in a similar situation.

1) I had to completely remove the firewall program from the W7 machine because I had an old version installed which was part of my problem. Even when I had turned everything off, it still had some services in the background running which was still blocking some connections.
After I got the network discovery working right, I reinstalled with the latest version and everything was working properly there...

2) W7 handles "finding" other networked PCs and devices differently than XP does. In XP the other PCs show up instantly because it remembers those paths. If any are not there anymore or new ones are added, it takes 10-20 seconds for those to appear/disappear.
With W7, they had the discovery renew each and every time it is opened. On my wireless laptop, I found if I just choose Start > Network and let it sit, nothing happens and I do not see the Network shares, but I do see the local computer. If I just click anywhere in the white area but not on an icon, it starts "discovering" (the green bar moves across at the top) and within a minute, all of my XP shares are found.
It does work properly on my desktop and starts the discovery automatically.

Yea, I meant nothing ignorant it's just I am trying to think out the process and I am unable to understand it. I am so angry about this because usually I can just google and find someone else that has the problem I have and solve it. This problem has occured with others and most have either a slightly different issue then mine OR they too never get theres worked out. I hear you telling me that windows 7 has a different way of accessing the network. Are you telling me that Windows 7 needs a table of DNS names in the router where as an XP machine does not? I don't even know how to go about putting a table like that in my router. I have a WRT54GS with dd-wrt installed and do not know how to set that up. I am only trying to run a workgroup network. I have no PC's except 2 XP machines and 1 Laptop which has windows 7 on it. The ONLY thing I hate about windows vista and 7 is the fact that they won't correctly access my XP machine. I think you both are correct it is DNS. I want to know why Windows 7 will not resolve the DNS name. It's like it's not really looking for the DNS name unless it is REALLY forced to.

Its more of a case of the way W7 handles network and shares discovery. It is not the router or anything else, it is just W7 takes an extra few minutes to "probe" all the computers and devices on the Network before it finds them. When you close the Window, it forgets this and has to probe each time the network share windows is opened.
In my case, I have a Linksys WMLS11B web music player that sits in the living room and connects via wireless. Both my desktop and laptop see it immediately, but it takes an extra minute or two for it to find the XP shared folders on my network (I have 3 PCs with various shared folders).
I also have a Linksys WRT54GT using DD-WRT but I also have UPnP turned off which I wonder if that may have something to do with the longer discovery time.

Another thing I found when I was doing some Vista testing was that it requires the LLTD-responder, and W7 also requires this on the XP machines.
http://www.microsoft.com/Downloads/...1D-EE46-481E-BA11-37F485FA34EA&displaylang=en


another thing I found is that W7 has IPv6 enabled by default so the increased discovery time may also be related to it looking for both IPv4 and IPv6 shares...

What's the share specifics of the XP folder you're sharing?

Thanks soooo much for everyones help. It's very nice to see so many people willing to go out of there way to help me

screwballl said:

Another thing I found when I was doing some Vista testing was that it requires the LLTD-responder, and W7 also requires this on the XP machines.
Download details: Link Layer Topology Discovery (LLTD) Responder (KB922120)


another thing I found is that W7 has IPv6 enabled by default so the increased discovery time may also be related to it looking for both IPv4 and IPv6 shares...

Click to expand...

OK, I have IPv6 already disabled on the laptop. Found the tip from someone else on a forum. I have LLTD on my XP machine but is LLTD not a default set up in Windows 7?? If this is the case it may be why it is not working. I assumed that I only needed to install lltd on my XP machine.

At "copernicus":

I have simple file sharing on. I have not set specific rules, just turned on file sharing and let XP set all the rules.

LLTD should also show in the network connection properties for W7 as it is included and a Windows service (although it is harder to find in W7 than XP). You will have to make sure it is enabled in W7 before the XP machines are found.

wish I had more to help with but thats all I got for now...

Lets try adding the xp computer name to your "hosts" file (you want to edit the file on your windows 7 computer)

For Windows:
1. Open the host file "hosts" located in the "C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc" directory using Notepad, Wordpad or any other text editing software you have or use.
2. Once the file is open, you will see a commented discription of the file in the first few lines and then below you will see an example on how to use it. The content of the file is actually divided into two columns. the "IP" column and the "domain" column.
3. Fill in the host file with the appropriate IP and domain information that you want to add.
4. Save the file.

Then restart, and give it a try. This will take any DNS issues out of the mix.

I have never needed to use the host file, besides blocking ad sites.

The TCP/IP NetBIOS helper service is the service that helps translate hostnames to IP addresses in Windows XP/Vista/7.

It's based on NetBIOS broadcasts, not DNS.

OK here's what I have tried. I re-wrote the Hosts file to include the PC name... That just made it to where if I manually typed the PC name in the address bar it would temp see it. No real fix. Thanks though.. It was an I dea I was thinking too, but just did not work. As for the LLTD service, I see that it is installed and running in both the XP machine AND the W7 machine. It's listed in the properties of all wifi devices and checked on both machines.

Still no luck. Trying to figure out what to try next