problems accessing a computer on home network

[WeirdClayJisKOO]

I have a network set up at my house, and it was working fine untill all of
the sudden, I couldn't access my desktop from my other computers. I need to
be able to access the desktop because thats what the printer is hooked up to.

I have three computers on the network. A desktop running XP home sp2, a
laptop running 98 SE, and a laptop running XP media center edition version
2003 sp2. I can access files between the two laptops fine, and i can access
files on the laptops from the desktop but i cannot access files on the
desktop from either of the laptops.

on the laptop running 98, when I try to access the desktop, it asks for a
password. I never specified a password, because i am on an encrypted network.
When I try to access the desktp from the laptop running media center edition,
I get the following message:

Myworkgroup:
\\Desktop 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.

Logon failure: the user has not granted the requested logon type at this
computer.


I tried installing the Windows 2003 Server Resource Kit Tools, but now I get
the message:

Myworkgroup:
\\Desktop 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.

Access is denied


what can i do so i can access that computer again. like i said, everything
was working fine untill suddenly i couldn't access the desktop.

Thanks for your help.

[Archangel122184]

This may get a bit confusing and I am sometimes pretty poor at explaining things, so please ask any questions you have, they are not stupid.

Windows XP attempts to authorize any user that connects to it from any computer with its own user list. If the user isn't found, the computer defaults to the Guest user. If the user name being used to connect to the PC matches any user on the PC (by name only), then the computer will give the remote computer (in this case your laptops) a password challange. If the password used to log into the remote comptuer doesn't match the password on the PC or if the password is blank, then the challange fails and you are denied access.

You can probably ignore all of that... The fact that everything was working and stopped means that something changed.

Have you recently changed any account passwords on the computer?
Have you recently insatlled any new security software (firewalls included)?
Have you recently been infected with any viruses?

[WeirdClayJisKOO]

yea i understand all of that. i havent changed any account passwords nor installed new security software. I have though gotten some worms. I have nortan run every night so it gets rid of them, but i did notice today that one of them was a W32.Spybot.Worm, which on a site i had visited while trying to fix my problem, had said it has been known to cause networking issues.

so I think I have narrowed it down to the cause of the problem, which is a start, but how do I fix it? thanks

[Archangel122184]

If I remember that worm correctly, it was distributed through AOL instant messanger or similar programs and rewrites several registry entries to lock down annonymous access to computers... quite annoying.

Go to start -> run -> "gpedit.msc" -> enter
Computer Configurations -> Windows Settings -> Security Settings -> Local Policies -> Security Options

Disable: Network access: Do not allow anonymous enumeration of SAM accounts
Disable: Network access: Do not allow anonymous enumeration of SAM accounts and shares
Enable: Network access: Let Everyone permissions apply to anonymous users
Enable: Network access: Named Pipes that can be accessed anonymously
Disable: Network access: Restrict anonymous access to Named Pipes and Shares
Enable: Network access: Shares that can be accessed anonymously

Computer Configurations -> Windows Settings -> Security Settings -> Local Policies -> User Rights Assignments

Add "Everyone" to Access this computer from the network.


Restart your computer and see if your access is restored.

[Archangel122184]

Sorry, just noticed that you only have xp home...

Windows XP Home does not include GPEDIT; XP Home users can apparently run this program if they have access to files from an XP Pro (or possibly Win 2000?) installation, by doing the following:
* Copy the files gpedit.dll and fde.dll from \WINDOWS\System32 on the XP Pro machine to \WINDOWS\System32 on the XP Home machine.
* From a command prompt issue the following commands on the XP Home machine: regsvr32 C:\WINDOWS\System32\gpedit.dll
* regsvr32 C:\WINDOWS\System32\fde.dll Open the Microsoft Management Console (mmc.exe) and select File->Add/Remove Snap-in... Then click Add. Select the Group Policy snap-in from the list of installed snap ins.
You can now edit the Group Policy on the local machine. But XP Home doesn't support the same feature set as XP Pro, so the policies you are looking for might be missing.

[WeirdClayJisKOO]

i was able to run gpedit, but I could only get to Computer Conficuration\Windows Settings, and it said "There are no items to show in this view."

I do believe I got a virus from AIM. There was a process (terminals.exe) that kept changing the registry value "ristrictanonymous" from 0 to 1. I installed AIMFix, and it remover that problem, allowing me to keep the "restrictanonymous" value at 0, but my network still doesn't work.

[Archangel122184]

alright... lets try a couple other registry keys then

HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa\Restrict AnonymousSAM set to 0
HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa\Everyone IncludesAnonymous set to 1

[WeirdClayJisKOO]

ok i changed thoes, restarted my computer, and checked to mak sure they stayed changed...still no luck. :-\

[Archangel122184]

I hope you aren't as frustrated as me...

download the Server 2003 reskit and install it...

The goto start -> run -> "cmd" -> enter
and run the following commands

net user guest /active:yes
ntrights +r SeNetworkLogonRight -u Guest
ntrights -r SeDenyNetworkLogonRight -u Guest
ntrights +r SeNetworkLogonRight -g Everyone
ntrights -r SeDenyNetworkLogonRight -g Everyone

[WeirdClayJisKOO]

omg i'm speachless it woked. haha this is amazing i can't thank you enough. i've worked on this for two weeks and have been getting help from people in 3 other forum websites. I had actuall already downloaded that and even entered the first three lines (one of the first things someone told me to do) but no one told me about the last two

thank you so much!!!

[Archangel122184]

Originally Posted by WeirdClayJisKOO

thank you so much!!!

You are very welcome. Please come back to CTH for any other help you need. We have a great base of specialists for just about every system.