Things I hate today.
Aug. 10th, 2006 06:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
theweaselking#1: Pedestrians in la belle province
#2: Being a pedestrian in la belle province
#3: Windows XP issues that stump Microsoft[1]
#4: Laptops. All laptops, but specifically fucking Sony fucking Vaio fucking laptops with bad video chips, which is a perfectly clear known issue, that choose WHEN THEY ARE IN THE ONLY STORE IN THE FUCKING CITY THAT CARRIES OLD VAIO PARTS to work PERFECTLY, in such a way that we can't make it fail, and that it hasn't worked before IN A BLOODY MONTH.
#5: Laptop stores that, upon seeing that the thing is POSTing, flat-out refuse to give me a quote on replacement parts. "It's working, you don't need one." "I WILL need one shortly. Price?" "But it's working now!" "It wasn't working ten minutes ago, and it won't be working ten minutes from now. HOW MUCH DOES A NEW FUCKING MOTHERBOARD AND CHIP COST?"
#6: Laptops, redux, as I leave the store, the store closes, and the laptop STOPS WORKING AGAIN.
#7: Toyotas that break down literally an hour from anything that even looks like civilisation, with no warning, showing no signs in the regular maintenance checkups, after working perfectly for most of the previous decade.
#8: Toyota dealerships in the middle of nowhere who replace your transmission, badly[2], and aren't open at a civilised hour OR located in a civilised location so you can get them to fix the very expensive job that they did wrong the first time.
I'm going to go kill something and eat it raw.
[1]: XP pro machine in a workgroup. No domain. It cannot browse other machines through Network Neighbourhood, nor can it connect to them by name. By IP, everything works absolutely perfectly and it can see and connect to those machines without a problem. Other machines in the workgroup cannot see this machine by name, but by IP they work perfectly. Every other machine can see every other machine without a problem. The machines are a mix of XP pro, XP home, Debian running Samba, and Ubuntu. When attempting to browse the workgroup, the error message is that the workgroup is not available, you don't have permission, the server list is not available.
NetBIOS is enabled (both through DHCP and through TCP/IP at different times), and it's even been tried disabled.
Computer Browser service has been stopped, started, run, told it's the master, told there is no master, and told that it cannot be the master but should look for one, to no avail.
No firewall or blocking software except Windows Firewall, and that's been disabled to test, too. No effect.
I've done everything but stick a damn lmhosts file in. I COULD put in an lmhosts file, but only about *half* of the machines that this one needs to connect to are on static IPs, and so the file would be counterproductive after a very short time AND it wouldn't detect new machines.
I'm stumped.
MSKB is stumped.
The owner of the machine resists "Here's your XP CD, key's in the sticker on the case, enjoy your reinstall" as an option, or good reason.
Any suggestions?
[2]: While it's a great, great improvement over "bang crunch shimmy screech to a stop ha ha your car is fucked", which was the state BEFORE the transmission replacement, currently the engine races way, way too far in 2nd and 3rd gear before shifting up and the entire car jerks when those gears shift. Shifting down appears to work perfectly normally. No, this doesn't depend on how hard I'm pressing the pedal, although putting the pedal down will make it happen faster. Have I mentioned how much I hate automatic transmissions? No? Let's put that as #9, then. #9: Automatic transmissions.
#2: Being a pedestrian in la belle province
#3: Windows XP issues that stump Microsoft[1]
#4: Laptops. All laptops, but specifically fucking Sony fucking Vaio fucking laptops with bad video chips, which is a perfectly clear known issue, that choose WHEN THEY ARE IN THE ONLY STORE IN THE FUCKING CITY THAT CARRIES OLD VAIO PARTS to work PERFECTLY, in such a way that we can't make it fail, and that it hasn't worked before IN A BLOODY MONTH.
#5: Laptop stores that, upon seeing that the thing is POSTing, flat-out refuse to give me a quote on replacement parts. "It's working, you don't need one." "I WILL need one shortly. Price?" "But it's working now!" "It wasn't working ten minutes ago, and it won't be working ten minutes from now. HOW MUCH DOES A NEW FUCKING MOTHERBOARD AND CHIP COST?"
#6: Laptops, redux, as I leave the store, the store closes, and the laptop STOPS WORKING AGAIN.
#7: Toyotas that break down literally an hour from anything that even looks like civilisation, with no warning, showing no signs in the regular maintenance checkups, after working perfectly for most of the previous decade.
#8: Toyota dealerships in the middle of nowhere who replace your transmission, badly[2], and aren't open at a civilised hour OR located in a civilised location so you can get them to fix the very expensive job that they did wrong the first time.
I'm going to go kill something and eat it raw.
[1]: XP pro machine in a workgroup. No domain. It cannot browse other machines through Network Neighbourhood, nor can it connect to them by name. By IP, everything works absolutely perfectly and it can see and connect to those machines without a problem. Other machines in the workgroup cannot see this machine by name, but by IP they work perfectly. Every other machine can see every other machine without a problem. The machines are a mix of XP pro, XP home, Debian running Samba, and Ubuntu. When attempting to browse the workgroup, the error message is that the workgroup is not available, you don't have permission, the server list is not available.
NetBIOS is enabled (both through DHCP and through TCP/IP at different times), and it's even been tried disabled.
Computer Browser service has been stopped, started, run, told it's the master, told there is no master, and told that it cannot be the master but should look for one, to no avail.
No firewall or blocking software except Windows Firewall, and that's been disabled to test, too. No effect.
I've done everything but stick a damn lmhosts file in. I COULD put in an lmhosts file, but only about *half* of the machines that this one needs to connect to are on static IPs, and so the file would be counterproductive after a very short time AND it wouldn't detect new machines.
I'm stumped.
MSKB is stumped.
The owner of the machine resists "Here's your XP CD, key's in the sticker on the case, enjoy your reinstall" as an option, or good reason.
Any suggestions?
[2]: While it's a great, great improvement over "bang crunch shimmy screech to a stop ha ha your car is fucked", which was the state BEFORE the transmission replacement, currently the engine races way, way too far in 2nd and 3rd gear before shifting up and the entire car jerks when those gears shift. Shifting down appears to work perfectly normally. No, this doesn't depend on how hard I'm pressing the pedal, although putting the pedal down will make it happen faster. Have I mentioned how much I hate automatic transmissions? No? Let's put that as #9, then. #9: Automatic transmissions.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-10 10:51 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-10 10:56 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-11 01:48 pm (UTC)Changed it to Hybrid in the registry:
Regedit:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/CurrentControlSet/Services/NetBT/Parameters
Add DWORD "NodeType"
Set value to 8.
Reboot.
Problem solved. Thanks for the help, though.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-10 11:19 pm (UTC)Googling for secedit will list several MS articles on the topic.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-11 03:45 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-11 01:48 pm (UTC)Changed it to Hybrid in the registry:
Regedit:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/CurrentControlSet/Services/NetBT/Parameters
Add DWORD "NodeType"
Set value to 8.
Reboot.
Problem solved. Thanks for the help, though.
XP not seeing other machines in network
Date: 2006-08-11 01:28 am (UTC)It really sounds like you have a firewall rule blocking, or - possibly, that your Winsock LSP TCP/IP stack is corrupt. On XP-SP2 that's really easy to rebuild.
Run this command as a local administrator from a CMD prompt:
netsh winsock reset
You should see the message: "Successfully reset the Winsock Catalog. You must restart the machine in order to complete the reset."
Reboot the machine.
Any programs that install custom or 3rd party LSP's into the Winsock stack will have to be re-installed, as this function restores the entire LSP stack to a "Windows freshly installed state." That may include virus scanners that monitor network traffic and third party software firewalls.
Re: XP not seeing other machines in network
Date: 2006-08-11 01:31 am (UTC)Re: XP not seeing other machines in network
Date: 2006-08-11 03:45 am (UTC)Thanks.
Re: XP not seeing other machines in network
Date: 2006-08-11 01:48 pm (UTC)Changed it to Hybrid in the registry:
Regedit:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/CurrentControlSet/Services/NetBT/Parameters
Add DWORD "NodeType"
Set value to 8.
Reboot.
Problem solved. Thanks for the help, though.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-11 08:27 am (UTC)I guess they were worried that large businesses would get the server infrastructure to support a directory service, but would save money by buying XP Home for their desktops. The official line given to MCSE's through Microsoft training (as of three+ years ago): "Suggest to your client that the company invest in XP Pro. Here are the obvious advantages that do not exist with XP Home...."
However, searching online has netted a host of suggestions, from activating the guest account and then deactivating it a few minutes later to UNchecking the Simple File Sharing box from the properties of the folders you want to share on the XP Pro box (not sure if this is an option in Home). None of these are fully satisfactory in my opinion; Microsoft could have been a bit more friendly with the home networking aspect, in anticipation that some folks would bring their work XP Pro PC home to use on their home networks. Alas, the crystal ball in Redmond is either cracked or covered by the cloth of marketing needs versus technical usability.
(Turning off file sharing to specific folders might work *if* you are using other SMB-style file sharing methods on the local network, but your mileage may vary.)
Other suggestions from the web (mostly neowin.net); use at your own risk:
* Make sure all networking services and protocols are installed and active/running on your XP Home machines
* If everyone is in the same Workgroup name, trash it and get all of the PC's onto a new, identical Workgroup name (I assume the poster of this suggestion hoped to generate a new SID or some such aspect)
* Change/add the NodeType property of your Windows NIC's to "Hybrid" in the Registry
(The last one came from: http://forums.devshed.com/networking-help-109/xp-pro-xp-home-network-no-go-150645.html and might be worth a read, although you've probably hit most of it already.)
Hopefully, either disabling Simple File Sharing or the registry fix will help. Both might be required; I am unsure as I gave up trying to make XP Home work with XP Pro a loooong time ago and have either installed XP Pro throughout my home network (where Windows workstations are desired), or put various Linux distributions on those boxes. Then again, I run a DNS server with an Active Directory infrastructure (on which two Fedora Core systems are happily using for authentication, although that was more painful than the "helpful" Red Hat GUI would make one believe), so I'm not in the position of testing XP Home hacks. Still, registry edits aren't always risky... or at least fatal. ;-)
Good luck.
- James -
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-11 12:26 pm (UTC)Thanks for the suggestions, I'll take a look at them.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-11 01:47 pm (UTC)Thanks, James. I owe you a beer.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-11 02:45 pm (UTC)- James -
(no subject)
Date: 2006-08-11 10:01 pm (UTC)Adding it to my personal KB, along with a pre-built REG-key for clients in case I run across the same issue - although most of my clients are on domains.