Okay so the problem I am having is I cannot acess my laptop with windows sharing/networking. I am trying to share files and printers between my Dexktop PC and my Laptop. My desktop PC is connect to a router with DNS by cable and the laptop is connected by Wi-Fi. Both computers belong to the same workgroup (WORKGROUP). Both computers have password protected public folder and printer sharing, file sharing, network discovery, and password protected sharing enabled. Both computers do have shared files and printers. What's happening is from the laptop the desktop (RK-PC) appears and I can share files and printers flawlessly and very quickly. However from the desktop while the laptop (RYANK-MOBILE) appears it cannot be accessed at all.
Also the desktop is vista 64 bit and the laptop is vista business.
I saw another thread with the same problem but the response pointed to a tome of an article that explained every single facet of windows sharing down to the way the packets are constructed. To be honest I don't have time to read 100 pages on windows sharing and there is no way the problem is the complicated. None of the suggestions I read in the first five pages or so helped at all any ways. I tried changing netBIOS from default to disabled on both PCs but after doing this the result was normal function on the laptop as before but the desktop could no longer even see/discover the laptop on the network.
Well here's a new one. Just out of curiosity I changed the workgroup for both comps to PCMOBILE. Now both computers can see each other but neither can access the otther ("windows cannot access \\COMPUTERNAME" error). Furthermore the laptop can't even access IT'S OWN SHARED FILES. I double click RK-MOBILE and the shared folder come up (as well as printers) but trying to open any of the foldersgives an access error ("windows cannot access \\RK-MOBILE" THEY ARE THE SAME COMPUTER!!!!!) I am beginnign to think, I read in this thread that after $60 and a good amount of time with an IT from M$ it turned out this was a registry problem and could be fixed by doing a repair of the OS. Well this is vista and there is no such thing as a repair. Would it be advisable to simply wipe the OS clean and start anew? This is a lenovo X61 tablet which has only a recovery partition on the hardrive, so it is possible that the problem is in the recovery partition, but who knows reinstillation might do the trick (though an extreme option it is okay because I jsut got this laptop and have only installed 4-5 programs on it).
This just keeps getting better. For some reason windows media player kept closing abruptly, so I asked windows to diagnose and it said the problem was my network controller (Nvidia nforce 780i). Well I looked and sure enough I had accidentally installed 32bit nforce driver instead of 64bit. Not knowing how to uninstall the driver I simply overwrote it by installing the 64bit driver. Well now of course I cannot even see the laptop from the Desktop (manually entering \\rk-mobile still does not work). Oddly enough maybe this is a step up since the computer should not display networks it cannot connect to. The status on the laptop is the same. It cannot access it's own shared fodlers, and still can't access the desktop at all (though ti can see it). Only development is I enabled media sharing on the desktop and the laptop picked it up successfully (I can play songs etc).
No one is responding but I'll keep posting updates anyway I suppose just incase this interests somebody. My next try will be to completely uninstall all nvidia drivers (I figured out you have to use the program manager not device manager) except the display driver. Then install the 64 bit driver I downloaded for nforce 780i and reboot.
