SP3 networking woes!

December 16, 2008 6:40 AM

So I went against my better judgment and installed SP3 on one of my XP Pro machines. I figured it was safe by now but, as luck would have it, I am now unable to see that computer on the network. Help!

After installing SP3 everything seemed fine while using that pc. I was able to immediately connect to the internet and I saw no problems. It wasn't until I tried to access that pc from my laptop (XP SP2) that I saw any problems.

First I tried to access some shared folders. Turns out that SP3 disabled sharing so I re-enabled it. No dice. Then I tried to RDP in and nothing doing there either. So then I tried to ping the IP of the SP3 maching and... nothing. I was able to get in through LogMeIn so at least that's still working somehow.

I had to reconfigure it's TCP/IP settings after the install so I know they're correct. Windows Firewall is disabled. I'm plum out of ideas so I welcome any and all suggestions.

Oh, and I tried to uninstall SP3 but it kept giving me an error saying, "Cannot find the file specified..." and then, "SP was not uninstalled". ARRRGHH!!

posted by jluce50 to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

Can the computer with SP3 still access the SP2 machine?

Also, are you accessing via hostname or IP address for file sharing & RDC? (should be the later, just in case).

I'd also make sure both computer are on the same subnet (probably 192.168.1.x) and have the same subnet mask (255.255.255.0). Then check the workgroup that it's the same. Shouldn't matter for ping & RDC, but can't hurt for file sharing.
posted by jmd82 at 7:10 AM on December 16, 2008

Same problem here.

jmd82, I'm sure your suggestions are good ones, but I for one don't know how to do what you're suggesting. Yet they sold me this stuff.
posted by JimN2TAW at 7:17 AM on December 16, 2008

The easiest way to check is probably to open your Start Menu and go into Run. Then type "cmd" and in the black screen type "ipconfig". Then check the ip-adress (the last numbers shouldn't be identical but the rest should) and the subnet mask (should be identical)
posted by kampken at 7:53 AM on December 16, 2008

Check the firewall on the upgraded machine. Sometimes updates to XP reset the firewall to it's most strict setting and the upgraded machine is probably blocking all connections from the network.
posted by COD at 7:59 AM on December 16, 2008

Do you have Norton or Symantec on there? Or any third-party firewall or AV? Some versions are too old to handle SP3 and end up cutting off connectivity with their built in firewall. You may need to uninstall it, disable its firewall, or upgrade it.


If not then go into hardware manager and delete the network adapter. Reboot, it will reinstall the driver for the network card.
posted by damn dirty ape at 10:02 AM on December 16, 2008

Response by poster: Okay, having already done just about everything that's been suggested here, I think I may have figured out the problem. I've been using a custom service configuration that disabled a bunch of services that I didn't need. It's been working this way forever. Anyhoo, I switched back to the default service configuration and RDP now works (I have yet to test the shared folders). Apparently SP3 changes something such that the RDP server now requires a service that it previous did not. Now I just need to figure out which one that is.

Thanks for the suggestions!
posted by jluce50 at 11:05 AM on December 16, 2008