Mysterious inbound lockout of peer-to-peer network

[Ron_Ellis]

Today one of our peer-to-peer network clients experienced an inbound outage to their Windows XP SP2 workstation/server. The perplexing situation included:

1. No ability to access shared network drives by network client workstations (as above)
   
2. The ability to see and surf to the file level from the server to all the other (3) connected workstations. During the problem the server could print to the printer attached to another workstation.
   
3. The ability at each workstation (total of three (3)) to see the server but NOT surf to it via ‘My Network Places’
   
4. A continuing ability by all workstations and the sever to connect to the Internet via a SonicWall TX-160 firewall/router/switch that is being used to create the local network.
   
5. Just to verify the problem a workstation was connected directly to the peer-to-per network server/workstation using just two cables and a Netgear 5-port switch. After this set-up the problem persisted as above.
6. We finally resolved the problem (without knowing it’s cause) by performing a system restore to last Friday’s system state.

We dislike having and resolving problems we don’t know the cause of. Any insights would be appreciated?

 

[DelJo63]

sounds like the firewall lost settings for ports 139/445 (file sharing).

which firewall are you using.

 

[Ron_Ellis]

Thanks for the reply....

Actually the Windows SP2 firewall is disabled and the entire peer-to-peer network is behind the sonicwall we mentioned. We turned off all the local firewalls in troubleshooting and the problem persisted?