wireless laptop problem

[slick8]

i cant see my other pc's, here we go, all pc's have the same workgroup, i have cable internet hooked up to a non wireless router, i have a wireless router plugged into the regular router which is how i connect to the internet with my wireless laptop, problem is i cant see any of my other pc's with my laptop

 

[RedBirdDad]

How do you have the wireless router connected to the wired router?

If you connected the wireless router's WAN port to the wired router it would explain your problem. The wireless router does NAT which would block the connections. The firewall would also do the same. Right now the laptop is technically on a different network since the radio and LAN ports are separated from the WAN port by NAT, FW and routing.

The key is to have everything on the same physical network. To do thus you need to use the wireless router as an AP thus bypassing all the NAT, FW and routing stuff. This will make the laptop look like it's connected directly to the wired router.

It's actually pretty easy:

1. Disable the DHCP server in the wireless router.
2. Connect the wireless router to the wired router using a *LAN* port. Leave the wireless router's WAN port empty.

The radio in the wireless router and the LAN ports are on the same side so they're in essence bridged together.

Give that a try.

 

[slick8]

that worked great, but i still have a problem, under the network and sharing center, 'see full map' i can see the other pc's but i cant see any of the shared folders on them, they are running xp by the way

 

[RedBirdDad]

Cool. Glad you got it going.

Here's a good tutorial from Microsoft on sharing between different versions of Windows=:

Networking home computers running different versions of Windows

 

[slick8]

i can see the pc but i cant access the folders on it, any ideas

 

[RedBirdDad]

You may want to do a reboot on all the machines to make sure everyone rediscovers the network.