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Why is Windows so crappy at network access?

2 points by robomartin ↗ HN
This is a recurring story. You have a bunch of Windows computers setup on an internal network and you have to jump through hoops to be able to share drives/directories. Sometimes you can't even see whole machines (very common). Same OS. Same setup. Same network settings. Administrative accounts everywhere. No dice.

There's post after post on the 'net with people having these problems. You'd figure that by now MS would have come up with a simple way to make all of this work. What gives?

4 comments

[ 1.8 ms ] story [ 18.7 ms ] thread
dkuntz2
I've never had an issue with Windows and networking.

If you're running Windows 7, why not just setup a HomeGroup?

robomartin
That's fine if you have W7. I have somewhere between over 20 machines on the network, more at times. A mix of Mac and PC's running a number of OS's, including XP, Vista 64 and Linux (no W7). Windows (any version) is a constant source of headaches when it comes to access to other machines.

We usually get it working, but it is always a bunch of voodoo. For example, two machines that are virual clones of each other can't see each other's shared drives. Both are running V64 Ultimate. Both are connected to the same switch. Both are on the same workgroup. Both have the same accounts and admin privileges setup. Both have network discovery and other relevant settings enabled. Other than different Windows (and other software) licenses they are clones.

Here's the kicker: Out of those two machines that can't see each other, one of them sees all the XP machines just fine while the other doesn't see anything but itself.

To say that this is frustrating is an understatement. A Google search returns lots of results, so I am definitely not alone on this one.

http://www.google.com/search?q=cant+see+other+computers+on+t...