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!