networking question for the geek squad

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I am having trouble with my Windows 2000 professional laptop when trying to network it with other computers. The laptop belongs to my office, and runs on the domain there at the office. When not at the office, I use the same logon. I use TCP/IP exclusively for all networking, and I have no problem using wireless and wired internet services at my house, hotels, cafe's, customer sites, etc. The problem however is trying to log onto workgroups to share files, such as mine at home.

When I click on "My network places", I get "add network places", and "entire network". I click on "Microsoft windows network", and then nothing shows up, and I must click on "View entire contents" At this point, my office domain of "TWG" shows right up, and the computer hour-glasses for at least a minute or so, then will eventually return the workgroup name that I'm trying to log into. If I click on that workgroup, it will show the computers in the network right off, but if I try and open one of the computers to connect to a disk drive or printer, I get the message "The logon server cannot be found" and it won't let me in after hourglassing for a minute or so.

Now, I can use all sorts of traditional TCP/IP services on the computer returning the error, like telnet, FTP, and even use a web browser if the host computer has web hosting set up, but I can't use the windows networking stuff to share files and stuff. It would make it much easier to transfer and share files if I could use this computer on a workgroup. My IT guy says that it should default back to a workgroup when it cannot find the office domain, but doesn't seem to be doing this. This all started after one of the many windows security updates a few months ago

Have you tryed changing the Windows 2000 network Group to MsHome? It defaults to Workgroup but XP defaults to MsHome. You have to make sure the computers are set to the same setting.

It could very well be that, because it belongs to a domain at work, when you bring it home, its looking for a domain controller to identify with (hence the login server not found). Try chaning its domain settings to not belonging to a domain, and instead belonging to a workgroup, preferably the same one as you have at home.

Then make sure your drivers are shared on the host computer, and another computer on the network can access them. If you still at that point cannot access the shares from the laptop, my recommendation would be to ask tech services at work and see what different things they may have setup on it to run with their network. Chances are you may have to reconfigure the entire networking stack on it every time you want to connect at home and then again when you go to work. Very painful, but I don't think windows supports mutliple network profiles to the extent of domain controllers and workgroups.

HTH
Grecko

It will talk to my home network when I go into it and change to a workgroup. The problem with doing this is that it uses a completey different user profile than when it's under the domain. The problem with this is that I cannot access all my stuff. I cannot get back into the domain profile until I get back into the office.

This computer used to be able to talk to my home workgroup without actually changing the setup from domain to workgrup. It stopped doing this after a windows update about 6 months ago. I'm not sure what changed

if you change the wookgroup for home it is a right pain to change it back because it will have to verify with the domain controller at work. howerever i forget its name but there is a little utility that allows you to change between to the two (or more) as you wish.

hope this helps ^licks^

jammie