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I Hate My Network

I Hate My NetworkI Hate My Network Hosted on Zooomr

\\Station-1\M is not accesible. 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!!!!!!!

Why is it that my network is so horrible. I have the worst time connecting up the three primary PCs in my house. It’s a wired connection. I have all of my drives on my main PC shared, but I consistently get messages like the one above when trying to pull files off my home PC on to my laptop. I wish that there were a way to permanantly actually share all of my info on my PCs with each other.

I can actually get rid of the error message above by going to the drive on the original PC unsharing the drive, then resharing the drive (yes I know the risks of sharing a drive message, blah, blah, blah) and only then can I reconnect.

It’s a pain in the ass.

And why is it that if I have my fancy new Windows firewall on that I can’t access any of the drives on my primary PC period. If I’m just going to disable my firewall because I need to use my home network, what’s the point really of having a firewall in the first place?

And why is it that my primary PC in my home office can’t access my other two PCs and hasn’t been able to for months?

And why is it that my USB card reader will work fine on my laptop but is not recognized by my primary office PC? It was recognized for the first few days I got it and I even hear a little beep beep thing when I plug it into my primary home office PC but no drive appears.

Sometimes I hate technology. As liberating as it can be it consistently is also super frustrating.

13 Replies to “I Hate My Network”

  1. Thomas, you’re using the wrong word in this sentence:

    “Sometimes I hate technology.”

    It’s not technology you hate. It’s Windows. You need a firewall to keep people from taking over your machine because you’re running Windows. It’s Windows that’s treating you like a child with its drive sharing warnings. It’s Windows that’s not functioning correctly.

    Yeah, it’s all very frustrating, but blaming “technology” when it’s all the fault of Windows isn’t very honest.

  2. Peer-to-peer Windows networking can be a PITA. It might require a little more time upfront, but setting up a Domain yields much better results.

  3. you might consider a macintosh. i don’t have these types of problems on my home mac network. just a thought.

  4. I agree with Dave. You might look at Microsoft Small Business Server. It’s about $500, but you’ll be a lot less likely to see these kind of messages. You also don’t necessarily have to run it on a server-class machine (but you won’t be able to use it as your primary workstation either).

    I can’t speak to MacOS, but unless you’re really knowledgeable, configuring Linux as a server to Windows clients is going to be a PITA.

  5. I personally use NFS to share stuff on my Windows box with my Linux boxes, and SMB (Windows File Sharing) to share stuff on my Linux boxes with my Windows Box (which could be the source of my lack of problems). However, unless you are very familiar with Linux file permissions, setting Samba up can be a pain.

    An alternate to using SMB is FTP, specifically FileZilla (for both the client and server). Doesn’t intergrate into Windows file explorer, but it still very easy to setup and use (and very fast).

  6. My mac mini flakes out as a server just as often. personally i am starting to give up on centralizing. instead i just put big drives on all my machines and use something like beyond compare to synch them up occasionally.

  8. that’s odd, i never have problems connecting to my mac mini server at home, even from my windows box.

    that said, in a windows world, setting up a domain will give far better results for file sharing, etc.

    microsoft small business server is a good piece of software. it has lots of wizards so its easy to set up.

  9. I can vouch for Network Magic. I’m an IT professional, and I don’t have the patience for the pain in the ass that is Windows file sharing (in a non-domain environment).

    I gave Network Magic a try and haven’t looked back. I wish that it could be more granular when it comes to per-computer permissions, but it makes it much easier for my MCE box to connect to music and picture shares on my Office PC.

    As for the Windows Firewall, you don’t need to disable it to allow file sharing. You just need to make an exception for “File and Printer Sharing” in the firewall settings. Of course, many security problems come from vulnerabilities found in file and print sharing, but it’s better than shutting it off altogether.

  10. What I hate is when things don’t work as they are supposed to… or worse, when they work for a while and then you try to use them again and they don’t work.

    A while back I used Adobe Premier Elements to capture some analog video through a Canopus card. Now for the life of me, I can’t get Premier Elements to capture any analog video. Doh!!!!

  11. I can’t get Adobe pdfs to work at all at work. Half the time they totally lock up my computer and the other half of the time they just take like 60 seconds to launch.

    I get a message that tells me to upgrade Adobe each time I launch it but if I try to upgrade it my PC tells me that I don’t have permission and the upgrade fails 100% of the time (annoying to be asked and told over and over and over again by Adobe). Once someone from IT upgraded my Adobe acrobat but then they had to roll it back because it wasn’t compatible with some other software.

    I could probably write a million stories about technology not working the way it’s supposed to.

  12. Thomas,

    You can almost always turn the upgrade notifications off in Adobe Reader. In version 7, it’s in Edit –> Preferences –> Updates.

  13. I have the same problem with my card reader and USB stick…plug it in, hear the beep, and then nothing happens.

    The device shows up in Disk Management but not in Windows Explorer. So I’ll reassign the drive letter in Disk Management and then it’ll show up in Windows Explorer.

    Riley
    Anybody know how to always make my miniCruzer show up as the same drive letter?

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