Network problems can be caused by all sorts of things, including aggressive firewalls, a faulty network installation, and even a defective or disconnected cable. Recently, however, I stumbled across a problem that didn’t respond to the usual solutions. Everything was installed properly and even without any firewall running, I couldn’t connect to other computers on my network. When I tried, I would receive a Network Path Not Found or other error message.
After some research, I discovered the following article on Microsoft’s Web site entitled “You cannot view other workgroup computers on the network on a Windows XP-based computer.” The article recommends the following course of action:
- Click Start, click Run,
type regedit, and then click OK. - Locate and then click the following registry subkey:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\
Services\NetBt\Parameters - In the right pane of Registry Editor, delete the following values if they are present:
- NodeType
- DhcpNodeType
Note If the NodeType value is present, this value will override the DhcpNodeType value. If neither subkey is present and if no WINS servers are configured for the client, the computer uses b-node mode. If at least one WINS server is configured, the computer uses h-node mode.
- Quit Registry Editor.
- Restart the computer.
- Try to view workgroup computers on the network again.
Note: You may need to repeat these steps on every computer on your network.
