After a week and a half I found out why XP and Vista wouldn't talk. I tried
everything and more. I can sum it up in one word...NORTON.

I saw all the posts on firewall problems, but I wasn''t using one. I had the
Windows firewall turned off and I never even set up the Norton firewall. I
kept getting the startup messages chiding me that I didn't have the firewall
turned on. I went so far as to create exceptions for all the proper ports for
Windows firewall.

I even tried Network Magic which changed the symptoms. Then it started to
work then it would quit. Very random and inconsistent. Today I could connect
to the XP shares, but I still couldn't even ping the Vista machine from XP.

I wasn't using NORTON, so I decided to remove it. BINGO! Everything sprang
to life. I could for the first time see all the workgroup computers on the
network. I gingerly went to the XP machine and it finally could see all the
Vista shares.

Life is now good again!

Solution...dump NORTON as fast as you can.

"Mark" wrote in message
...
After a week and a half I found out why XP and Vista wouldn't talk. I
tried
everything and more. I can sum it up in one word...NORTON.

I saw all the posts on firewall problems, but I wasn''t using one. I
had the
Windows firewall turned off and I never even set up the Norton
firewall. I
kept getting the startup messages chiding me that I didn't have the
firewall
turned on. I went so far as to create exceptions for all the proper
ports for
Windows firewall.

I even tried Network Magic which changed the symptoms. Then it started
to
work then it would quit. Very random and inconsistent. Today I could
connect
to the XP shares, but I still couldn't even ping the Vista machine
from XP.

I wasn't using NORTON, so I decided to remove it. BINGO! Everything
sprang
to life. I could for the first time see all the workgroup computers on
the
network. I gingerly went to the XP machine and it finally could see
all the
Vista shares.

Life is now good again!

Solution...dump NORTON as fast as you can.

Similar experience but with McAfee and very slow file transfers.
Switching off the third party firewalls isn't enough, seems you need to
uninstall.
Tom

Not completely true. i had Nortons too (but mine is Nortons Internet
Security) so I just had to go to the "trust" page and it showed the other
computer trying to connect so I trusted the connection. on the other one, all
I have to do is turn off ZoneAlarm and it works. I have to say..Zonealarm is
very good at stopping things. best of luck to anyone having this problem.
"Tom Allen" wrote:


"Mark" wrote in message
...
After a week and a half I found out why XP and Vista wouldn't talk. I
tried
everything and more. I can sum it up in one word...NORTON.

I saw all the posts on firewall problems, but I wasn''t using one. I
had the
Windows firewall turned off and I never even set up the Norton
firewall. I
kept getting the startup messages chiding me that I didn't have the
firewall
turned on. I went so far as to create exceptions for all the proper
ports for
Windows firewall.

I even tried Network Magic which changed the symptoms. Then it started
to
work then it would quit. Very random and inconsistent. Today I could
connect
to the XP shares, but I still couldn't even ping the Vista machine
from XP.

I wasn't using NORTON, so I decided to remove it. BINGO! Everything
sprang
to life. I could for the first time see all the workgroup computers on
the
network. I gingerly went to the XP machine and it finally could see
all the
Vista shares.

Life is now good again!

Solution...dump NORTON as fast as you can.

Similar experience but with McAfee and very slow file transfers.
Switching off the third party firewalls isn't enough, seems you need to
uninstall.
Tom

I wasn't using Norton firewall, which is why I never considered trying to
manipulate the settings. I did look at the list of open and closed ports on
the machine and they all showed open/allowed, so I expected they were. I
haven't done a good post-mortem but everything on the machine idicated it
should have been working. Port 445 was open, so if nothing else i should have
been able to ping it. Even though Norton may have had trust issues,
explicitly allowing that port should hve worked. While uninstalling Norton I
watched what was being removed and it indicated a number of network drivers.
While I may never knpow exactly what the particular problem was with Norton,
I'm glad it's gone. Everything else about the machine is working better too.
It boots much faster. Email is faster too. I've never been a fan of Norton
it's alway sslowed my machines down to a crawl. It came on this one and I was
so focused on getting the rest of everything going, i hadn't gotten around to
removing it yet. Now that I'm back in business, I slowly start going through
and putting the Windows firewall back in place.

"Imori" wrote:

Not completely true. i had Nortons too (but mine is Nortons Internet
Security) so I just had to go to the "trust" page and it showed the other
computer trying to connect so I trusted the connection. on the other one, all
I have to do is turn off ZoneAlarm and it works. I have to say..Zonealarm is
very good at stopping things. best of luck to anyone having this problem.
"Tom Allen" wrote:


"Mark" wrote in message
...
After a week and a half I found out why XP and Vista wouldn't talk. I
tried
everything and more. I can sum it up in one word...NORTON.

I saw all the posts on firewall problems, but I wasn''t using one. I
had the
Windows firewall turned off and I never even set up the Norton
firewall. I
kept getting the startup messages chiding me that I didn't have the
firewall
turned on. I went so far as to create exceptions for all the proper
ports for
Windows firewall.

I even tried Network Magic which changed the symptoms. Then it started
to
work then it would quit. Very random and inconsistent. Today I could
connect
to the XP shares, but I still couldn't even ping the Vista machine
from XP.

I wasn't using NORTON, so I decided to remove it. BINGO! Everything
sprang
to life. I could for the first time see all the workgroup computers on
the
network. I gingerly went to the XP machine and it finally could see
all the
Vista shares.

Life is now good again!

Solution...dump NORTON as fast as you can.

Similar experience but with McAfee and very slow file transfers.
Switching off the third party firewalls isn't enough, seems you need to
uninstall.
Tom

"Mark" wrote in message
...
After a week and a half I found out why XP and Vista wouldn't talk. I
tried
everything and more. I can sum it up in one word...NORTON.

I saw all the posts on firewall problems, but I wasn''t using one. I had
the
Windows firewall turned off and I never even set up the Norton firewall. I
kept getting the startup messages chiding me that I didn't have the
firewall
turned on. I went so far as to create exceptions for all the proper ports
for
Windows firewall.

I even tried Network Magic which changed the symptoms. Then it started to
work then it would quit. Very random and inconsistent. Today I could
connect
to the XP shares, but I still couldn't even ping the Vista machine from
XP.

I wasn't using NORTON, so I decided to remove it. BINGO! Everything sprang
to life. I could for the first time see all the workgroup computers on the
network. I gingerly went to the XP machine and it finally could see all
the
Vista shares.

Life is now good again!

Very odd. While I hate Norton products with a passion I have to say this is
quite a stunt even by their standards.

Glad you have it fixed now though :-)

The thread I went by was from someone having the same problem except with
Mcafee. He did all the troubleshooting, but it still wouldn't work. He
disabled the firewall, but no luck. He ended up unistalling McAfee and his
worked fine then too.

Oh well, it worked...

"Robert Moir" wrote:


"Mark" wrote in message
...
After a week and a half I found out why XP and Vista wouldn't talk. I
tried
everything and more. I can sum it up in one word...NORTON.

I saw all the posts on firewall problems, but I wasn''t using one. I had
the
Windows firewall turned off and I never even set up the Norton firewall. I
kept getting the startup messages chiding me that I didn't have the
firewall
turned on. I went so far as to create exceptions for all the proper ports
for
Windows firewall.

I even tried Network Magic which changed the symptoms. Then it started to
work then it would quit. Very random and inconsistent. Today I could
connect
to the XP shares, but I still couldn't even ping the Vista machine from
XP.

I wasn't using NORTON, so I decided to remove it. BINGO! Everything sprang
to life. I could for the first time see all the workgroup computers on the
network. I gingerly went to the XP machine and it finally could see all
the
Vista shares.

Life is now good again!

Very odd. While I hate Norton products with a passion I have to say this is
quite a stunt even by their standards.

Glad you have it fixed now though :-)