For years, our main gaming computer (which we call the “Titan”) would just not share with any other computers.

It couldn’t host multiplayer games.

It couldn’t share a printer.

It wouldn’t share files.

You couldn’t access multimedia of any sort over it.

I had absolutely no idea what the problem was — it was a very old Windows XP installation, probably four years or more, and had gone through Windows XP SP1, SP2, and SP3, so there’s no telling.

It might’ve been some service I turned off years ago, or (more than likely) an old remnant  of Norton Antivirus (a horrible, horrible program) that refused to let go.

I noticed that my much newer gaming PC would work just fine, and that it was running the exact same services that the Titan was running, so I was stumped.  You couldn’t even ping the Titan if you wanted to.

So, on a whim, I search for “cannot ping Windows XP computer” on Google, and found this:

Try this to reset TCP/IP in XP:

Click Start -> Run -> CMD

At the prompt type:

NETSH INT IP RESET C:IPRESET.TXT

via Help! Unable to ping machine on the network – Windows NT / 2000 / XP / 2003.

And it worked.  I don’t know what it did, but it worked.  I think it reset completely the way that TCP/IP worked on Windows, because when the Titan restarted, my IP settings were completely reset, but I could ping it. And it shared files.  And it could host games (I think).

Either way, I’m happy!