i have recently upgraded all my machines to xp home (big problem) i have 3 pc's, one laptop, one hp lazerjet 4, and one hp 7410 copier scanner printer fax. i thought this would be easy considering all the advances microsoft claims to have made to xp. (microsoft is the devil)
well first off the install seemed to go just as described, then i noticed that the network connection was intermittant. so i went to the network troubleshooter (which never seems to talk about problems that people really have) with no help.
after reading some threads i was lead to believe my firewall was the problem, so i punched the recommended holes in it, no help.
during all this one of my computer developed a virus (compliments of my daughter) and after cleaning it i had other problems so i reloaded the computer which seems to have killed the internet connection on that machine.
and i tried to go wireless on two of my pc's but that failed miserably since my cordless phones are on the same frequency. my 7410 printer seems to be on another frequency and does not affect my connection but that is a whole discussion in itself (3 1/2 hours on tech support to india and the only thing they solved is that they couldnt get me to buy hardware i rilly didnt need). by the way that connection seems to have gone away also.
the end result is i cant see any of my computer or printers across the network unless i disable all my firewalls and i think i have a ton of holes in my firewalls that need to be closed since there not doing what they were supposed to.
i know this was long winded, i hope you can get the idea of my problems out of the meat of this.
i guess the first thing is i need to reset the holes in my firewalls, how do i do that? and what should be my first steps in restoring the internet connection to the computer i reloaded.