Hi all, I thought I would start a new thread, as most of the Vista networking questions are about domains or XP. In my case, I have a workgroup called 16highstreet containing a Windows 2000 Server, a Windows 2003 Server and 4 XP Home machines and one XP Pro machine (all 32 bit editions). All have got the same administrator password, and the same 5 user accounts. The Windows 2000 server does DNS and DHCP; both servers are running IIS, and the 2003 server is running SQL Server 2005 Express. All works fine. I have just added a new machine, running Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit edition. It is in a workgroup of the same name and has one user account (David) which has the same password as one of the accounts on the other machines. From my Vista machine I can see all the other machines in the Netwrok center, and the router. I can access the Windows 2000 server and all the shares, and all shares on the Windows XP machines, but when I try to openthe Windows 2003 server I get an error saying: Windows cannot access \\ServerName Check the spelling of the name. Otherwise there might be a problem with your network. From Vista, I can ping all machines except the 2003 server. From the 2003 Server I can ping all machines INCLUDING the Vista machine. Also, from Server 2003 I can access the "public" share on my Vista machine, by entering the credentials for "David", as you would expect. Have any of you seen this before? I have tried making the Server 2003 machine the DNS, but that didn't work, and I lost access to the internet from Vista. I cannot find how to set the local Administrator password in Vista, and I don't remember being asked for it on installation. All the help files say "You can't set it because you are in a domain", which is daft since Vista Home can't join a domain, and I'm clearly not. Any clues? Thanks,

Hi, I would like to confirm if you tired to ping the Windows Server 2003 machine with the IP address. If not, please ping with the IP address and check the result. If you have tried to ping the Windows Server 2003 machine with the IP address, and it still fails, I suggest checking the following points: 1. On the Windows Vista machine, open a Command Prompt, type arp a and press Enter. After that, check if the IP-to-Physical address is correct for the Windows Server 2003 machine. 2. Please temporary turn off the firewall in the Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003 and the network devices between the two machines and check the result. Hope it helps.

Hi Joson, Thanks for the reply. Yes, it seems to be a firewall issue. In answer to your questions - I pinged by IP address, as well as by NetBIOS name and full DNS name, all to no avail. The ARP cache was entirely correct, for all machines, as confirmed from ipconfig. When I switched off the firewalls all worked perfectly. I switched the Server 2003 firewall back on, and it all stopped again. I switched it off again, and put the Vista firewall back on and it all worked fine. So finally I switched Server 2003 firewall back on, and went into exceptions and file sharing was unticked, so I checked it and it worked perfectly. I'm a bit surprised, because I have been using this server as a file server and ASP.NET development machine in the past, so file and print sharing must have been enabled. I don't understand why it would have been switched off. Anyway that's fixed it for now. Any ideas how file sharing could be switched off without me knowing?

Hi, Glad to hear that the cause has been found. I am not sure why the file sharing exception is switched off automatically, as I know it can be controlled by Group Policy and it may be interference by some third party driver. This forum deals mainly with Windows Vista related issues, Id like to recommend that you submit it in Windows Server 2003 Newsgroup if you would like to get further assistance. They may help you enable some trace to monitor this issue. For your convenience, Ive listed the link of Windows Server Networking Discussion website: http://www.microsoft.com/communities/newsgroups/en-us/default.aspx?dg=microsoft.public.windows.server.networking&cat=en_US_98878752-d3c2-4150-b16d-86a73bc8f802&lang=en&cr=US Thank you for your understanding.