Pakku’s Blog

“<Network workgroup> is not accessible. You might not have permission to use this network resource. Contact the administrator of this server to find out if you have access permissions. The list of servers for this workgroup is currently not available.”

This is a common issue for many (home) network administrators/users, but how to solve it?

Pass trough the following steps, this will solve about 90% of the people’s network issue’s

1. Ping each other well.
   1. Run command prompt (Start -> Run -> cmd)
   2. type: ping <ip address>(enter the others ip address).
2. Netbios over tcpip is enabled.
   1. Start -> Run -> ncpa.cpl
   2. Right click on the Local Area Connection or the connection you are using and chose properties.
   3. Select the Internet Protocol version 4 (TCP/IPv4)  and hit the properties button.
   4. Click the Advanced button under the General tab.
   5. Click the WINS tab.
   6. Click the Enable NetBIOS Over TCP/IP button.
   7. Click Ok.
3. Wins setting is blank.
   1. Go to the WINS tab. (see above)
   2. Delete all WINS-addresses shown.
   3. Click Ok.
4. Workstation service is running.
   1. Start-> Run-> services.msc
   2. Look up: Workstation
   3. Start the service.
5. Server service is running.
   1. See how to start the Workstation service above, but apply it to the Server service.
6. Guest account is enabled.
   1. Go to Start, then Control Panel, and then click User Accounts.
   2. Click Guest.
   3. Click Turn On the Guest Account.
7. Folders have been shared with proper share-level permissions, e.g. fullcontrol -> everyone.
8. Folders have been set with proper NTFS-level permissions, e.g. fullcontrol -> everyone. 

Point 7 and 8 need some attention. playing with these folder permissions isn’t like playing the piano. If you set the permissions ‘wrong’ there is a possibility that you won’t have access to it any more, so pay attention by setting these!

If you pass the first 6 steps, most likely 7 and 8 will solve the problem, so here we go.

If you have windows XP Home, before you go on, boot you system in safe mode by taking the following steps:

1. If the computer is running, shut down Windows, and then turn off the power.
2. Wait 30 seconds, and then turn the computer on.
3. Start tapping the F8 key.
4. The Windows Advanced Options Menu appears. If you begin tapping the F8 key too soon, some computers display a “keyboard error” message. To resolve this, restart the computer and try again.
5. Ensure that the Safe mode option is selected.
6. Press Enter.
7. The computer then begins to start in Safe mode.
8. When you are finished with all troubleshooting, close all programs and restart the computer as you normally would.

So Windows XP Home users have to boot in safe mode, XP Pro users won’t have to.

Now we can go on:

1. Double-click My Computer on the desktop.
2. On the Tools menu, click Folder Options.
3. Click the View tab, and then select the Use Simple File Sharing (Recommended) uncheck box to turn off Simple File Sharing. (click here for a video)
4. Right-click the folder, and then click Sharing and Security.
5. Click to select the Share this folder on the network check box.
6. Click to select the Allow network users to change my files check box if you want this, and then click OK.

We can now set the permission. We can chose between two things:

• Local NTFS Permissions
• Network Share Permissions

In order to allow network users to do things with the file, you can set the Network Share Permissions for Everyone to Full Control, but you can also chose for Guest because this is the account the network user will authorise itself with. 

You can now reboot and the settings will be applied. If you want to be for example the Program files folder to be accessible by network users, also apply here some Network Share Permissions. you normally won’t have to do this, if you apply some permissions on a folder it will also be applied by he sub folders/files, but ’special’ folders like Program files and Documents and Settings, will still have there own and have to be set manually.

This will do solve the network issue, if not, read on.

Anti-virus and Firewalls can be the cause of the problem, bu uninstalling, it may be that the problem is still there. This is because there is still some stuff around in you system that’s blocking it. You can solve it by searching on the website of you anti-virus/firewall company, if they have some sort of tool to remove all traces of there software. If they don’t have this, you can chose between two things:

1. A clean reinstall of Windows
2. Removing all manually

Option 1 is the most easiest, but takes more time that the second option.

I will here explain the second option, how to reinstall Windows, I will post an other time, for now you can stick by using this webiste

There are two places Software can put some date:

• The hard disk
• Registry

What we will have to do, is to remove all files which have to do with the uninstalled security suite.

Yes you read it right, before taking these steps, uninstall your security suite.

In my case, Norton was the problem, now I have Mcafee and with that I don’t have any network problems, so if you have Mcafee and some network problems, it will most likely in you firewall settings, so check those before.

We now will remove every thing about the security suite of the hard disk.

1. Start -> Search
2. Chose All files and folders
3. Enter something that has to do with the security suite, like Norton or Symantec
4. at Advanced options, make sure that sub folders will be searched, aswell as hidden files and folders and system files has also be checked.
5. Click the Search button.
6. After a while it will come with some results.
7. Carefully chose which one can be deleted.
8. Repeat this with other words, if you first looked for Norton, now search for Symantec and so on.

OK now we’re sure all files/folders are gone, we will take a look at the registry.

The Windows Registry is most likely one of the important parts of Windows, so don’t mess with it if you don’t know what you are doing!

Download a registry editor, like RegSeeker, or you can use Window’s build-in editor: Start -> Run -> Regedit

I will use RegSeeker for this, but feel free to use an othr editor.

1. Start RegSeeker
2. Click on Find in registry …
3. Make sure every thing is checked except for: Search files and Mach whole word.
4. Click the Search button.
5. After a while it will come with some results.
6. Carefully chose which one can be deleted (mostly all of them).
7. Repeat this with other words, if you first looked for Norton, now search for Symantec and so on.
8. Reboot Windows

Now your network problems are solved, if not, the problem is somewhere else, this may require reinstalling Windows.

If you need any help, contact me. Good luck,

Pakku